Guards Polo Club remembers 100 years on
By Victoria Elsbury-Legg
Yesterday night across England, people and business remembered the many men who gave their lives for their Country one hundred years on by putting their lights out from 10-11pm and lighting a candle. On Sunday at Guards Polo Club, whose roots are steeped in military history, the Centenary of World War One was commemorated during the Flemish Farm Final as 1st Battalion Irish Guards and their mascot, Irish Wolfhound Domhnall, visited the Club and led the two teams Il Sole and Tele Atlantic through the goal posts to the start of their game.
Not only did Guards Polo Club begin life as a military club, but during The Great War the Canadian Forestry Battalion camped at Smith’s Lawn on the very grass that is now more used to the hooves of horses rather than the march of many military feet. On Sunday as Tele Atlantic, wearing Black Hound shirts, defeated Elio Leoni-Sceti’s Il Sole team 7 ½ – 4 it was poignant to note the young English players involved, whose teamwork, dedication and horsemanship on the pitch which would have been the very same skills needed by men not much older than them, one hundred years ago on distant fields.
Subsidiary Final winners were Mad Dogs (who beat SportsLobster 10 – 7 ½) whose patron Alan Fall collected the cup from Col. Michael O’Dwyer, recently retired from the Irish Guards, who also handed the trophy to Fernando Torres from Tele Atlantic winners of the main Flemish Farm Final. During the day donations were made to the Irish Guards Appeal, as the crowd and players remembered the ten million men who were killed in World War I, alongside the eight million war horses. One million of which went from Britain to the Western Front, with only 60,000 returning to English shores.