Play continued for day 2 of the Gold Cup at Cowdray Park Polo Club on Wednesday 26th June with a triple header.
Match 1
The first match of the day saw Sheikha Maitha’s team take on the formidable Park Place organisation. Close to begin with, the teams were well matched, both sporting similar line ups as the Queen’s Cup (Park Place just with the one substitution of Rufino Merlos out for Matias Gonzalez) and so comfortable and able to hit the ground running.
It was anyone’s game until the 5th chukka, with the two sides going goal for goal, but a huge push in the penultimate saw UAE blast past increasing their lead to an insurmountable 5 goals going into the last. Winning almost double the throw ins it shows the power of possession and once the UAE side got going in the second half, they were unstoppable, the final whistle going on a 13-9 victory for UAE.
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The second match up of the day was a win from Dubai Polo Team over the Sujan Indian Tigers. Despite the final  scoreline, this was a deceptively tightly contested match, with heavy defence from Sujan Indian Tigers making life difficult for Dubai. It was certainly this way around though as Dubai carried most of the possession throughout and despite tenacious efforts from the Tigers side, the possessive power of Jeta Castagnola and Antonio Heguy meant these goal scoring machines made their mark on the scoreline early on, going 5 up after the first 2 chukkas before Sujan Tigers were even able to get on the scoreboard.
Unable to overcome this early lead, the fate of the Sujan Tigers was set and Dubai ran out the decisive winners.
Chukka Breakdown:
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Photo credit – Mark Beaumont