Only two games today but no shortage of drama. Alexandre Garese’s Akasha team won the first game of the day but only after a really tight battle with Adebayo Karim’s Shoreline and a seventh chukka. Facundo Fernandez Llorente fired through the winner for Akasha in the overtime. Ironically it was Shoreline that had held a slight upper hand on occasion in this match, leading 4-2 at the end of the second and 8-7 at the end of the fourth. Akasha fought back to level every time – one should never discount a team featuring Pablo Macdonough – and so it was of little surprise that this game went into extra time. Although Shoreline didn’t win Karim did have two field goals under his belt, and so he can take some positives from this match. The partnership of Ed Banner-Eve, playing in his first Queen’s Cup tournament, and Alejandro Muzzio is also one that the other teams will need to respect.
Image credit: Art of Polo
The Teams:
Score Progression:
Game Statistics:
Second Match
Next up it was the defending champions, Andrey Borodin’s Park Place in action against the Sujan Indian Tigers. This was six chukkas packed full of drama, speed and passion. Park Place signalled their intent from the start, finding the flags in the first minute. By half-time they were in the lead 7-4. Hilario Ulloa was firing through goals at speed while Juan Martin Zubia and Marcos Araya were scoring for Sujan Indian Tigers. Their patron, Jaisal Singh, added a goal in the third, picking up a lovely pass from Juan Britos. The third chukka ended with Park Place ahead 7-4 and Ulloa colliding with a goalpost. Both player and pony were fine, but Sujan Indian Tigers’ Britos received his second yellow of the match and so started the fourth in the sin bin. Park Place made the most of the superior manpower and pushed the score to 9-4. With Britos now back on the field both teams added to their tally and the scoreboard read 10-6, again in favour of Park Place, at the start of the fifth. Leo Stuart subbed in for Borodin at the start of this chukka and the only goal came off the stick of Araya. This was still anyone’s game. Britos and Zubia brought the Tigers right back into it only for Louis Hine to score for Park Place. So it was left to Araya to close the gap once more and then Zubia take the ball from the half-way line with just 30 seconds left and level the score once more. There was just time for one more throw in which Hine won. Some great teamwork between Jeronimo del Carril and Hine resulted in the latter scoring the winner – 12-11.
Image credit: Art of Polo
The Teams:
Score Progression:
Game Statistics:
Stats provided by https://poloreport.com/