AAP follows Tanoira’s suggestions

AAP follows Tanoira’s suggestions!

 

It’s springtime for polo in Argentina, in every sense of the word. Following the discussion provoked by Javi Tanoira’s essay the AAP has changed a couple of rules and issued new guidelines to the umpires and the results are now being seen in a very positive way at the Tortugas Open.

 

1. When going back towards your own goal in defence you have to hit a backhander. This applies anywhere on the field. You cannot change the line of the ball and turn it in front of your opponent if he is coming up behind to try and take it off you, you now have to hit a backhander (obviously if you are way out on your own and no one else is following the line you can still turn with the ball). If your opponent stops your backhander and regains possession then you had better learn to hit a better backhander next time. This has speeded things up enormously.

 

2. No more ’walking’ with the ball. You have to gallop with it. Nero (Ellerstina) was the 1st (and last) player to be blown for walking on Saturday. The others quickly got the message and of course they are good enough players to adapt their game at once.

 

Another thing is that they are strictly limiting the time you can take to hit a penalty or a corner. You only have one shot at a penalty now. If your pony suddenly changes legs or jibs, that is tough luck, you have to hit the penalty first time whatever.

 

The result: players (i.e. Pablo MacDonough, Facundo Pieres, Russo Heguy, the Novillos) and public are unanimous that the last 3 Tortugas games were more beautiful than just about anything that was seen last year. It is looking promising. Obviously there will be much more pressure on the players for Hurlingham and Palermo and we don’t know how they will cope but so far this has been extremely positive. There were only 15 fouls in the Ellerstina (10)/La Aguada (5) game on Saturday, which is less than 2 fouls per chukka. There are now more field goals and less penalty goals, which is all to the good.

 

These two changes to the rules are almost certainly not going to be enough on their own to bring about the profound changes to the way polo is played and thought about that the Javi Tanoiras of this world would like to see but it is great that they have been adopted at all and if nothing else will have got the ball rolling in a positive way and will be making more people realize that it is not impossible to change this wonderful game for the better and to get them thinking about fresh ways to achieve this. Well done the AAP.