Comfortable victories for Dubai and Britannia El Remanso
Dubai 15 – 9 Zacara at Zacara
Dubai confirmed their status as one of the top teams in this year’s Cartier Queen’s Cup with an impressive 15-9 win over Zacara at Zacara’s home ground today. This was always going to be an exciting game, but Dubai’s strategy of closing down Lyndon Lea’s boys proved very effective. Zacara, one of the four seeded teams in this year’s tournament, had won their first two matches comfortably, playing their preferred long and running with the ball style of game. Dubai stopped them playing like this, with Rashid Albwardy and Kian Hall regularly stopping the Zacara players from getting free to run. When Pablo MacDonough did manage to escape from his “minders” he would invariably run to goal and score, but his chances were few and far between today.
Dubai gave themselves a comfortable three-goal lead in the second, and although Zacara would battle back to within one again several times during this match, Dubai would just turn on the power and surge ahead once more. In fact, Dubai never then looked in danger of losing this game. Juan Martin Nero was superb in defence and Adolfo Cambiaso did what Cambiaso always does, watch and wait and then jump in and pick up the ball when needed. The young Englishman Jack Hyde was exceptional up front for Zacara, even taking out Nero at one point and then playing a wonderful nearside neck shot to score and Lucas Monteverde was strong for Zacara too, but they were no match for an on-form Dubai. Albwardy’s team are the only squad so far to have won all three of their league matches and the only other team that can now achieve this same feat are their longstanding rivals, and fellow 2015 finalists, King Power Foxes.
Britannia El Remanso 13 – 8 RH Polo
The all-British team of El Remanso had a comfortable victory over RH Polo in the second league game of the day. Ben Soleimani’s team were looking for that all important first win and despite some great play from his squad, they could not find any answers to the El Remanso teamwork. Nico Pieres started things off for RH, ensuring they were leading 3-2 at the end of the second. However, this was also the chukka that El Remanso’s James Harper received a yellow card. Without realising it at the time this was actually the turning point of the game. Harper upped his game straightaway and El Remanso never looked back. In addition, his team’s patron Charlie Hanbury was on brilliant form – scoring at least five of his team’s goals – and even cheekily stealing the ball from under the nose of Nico Pieres and running it straight to goal!
James Beim confirmed El Remanso’s superiority in the final two chukkas, scoring several goals in the final two chukkas. Such was the cohesiveness of the Hanbury squad that RH failed to score at all in the sixth. This gives Britannia that all important second victory – they had already beaten Sifani by a wide margin and only went down by one to Dubai and so are looking strong for the final stages of this tournament.
NEXT GAMES – SATURDAY 28 MAY
12noon Apes Hill v King Power Foxes at Dubai
3pm HB Polo v La Indiasna at Guards Polo Club