Polo sounds tricky, lacrosse a challenge, so a combination of the two has to be impossible, right? Actually, it's addictive, writes Gemma Tipton.
They call it hurling on horseback, and I adore it. Polocrosse is, as its name suggests, a mixture of polo and lacrosse. A little skill at hurling doesn't go amiss, either. It's exciting, exhilarating, addictive and the best fun I've had in the open air for a long time. As a child I read pony books, drew pony pictures on my copy books and thought mucking out stables was heaven. Then I went to college, discovered other ways of passing the time and kind of got over the whole thing. But when a chance came to get back into it, I was all for it.
So a couple of months ago I went to Carrickmines Equestrian Centre, in Co Dublin, for my first lesson. Vaguely anxious after 20 years out of the saddle, I wondered how much I might have forgotten. Also, always having been less than adept at sports that involve throwing, catching and hitting - which rules out most of them - I wondered how humiliating the experience was going to be. But the horse riding, at least, turned out to be like riding a bicycle: you don't forget.
Everything started to come back to me as I got up on to Murdo's saddle. Murdo is a horse with personality: try to tighten his girth and he bites your backside. Riding him is more like coming to a series of agreements than telling him what to do. (I learned to bribe him with apples.) There's also Rufus, a movie star. He has appeared in several films, as well as an advertisement for Ballygowan and a music video. The heartwarming story behind many polocrosse horses is that, as failed racehorses, many have been rescued from dog-food factories. After arriving tired and listless, they re-emerge as shining, high-stepping, high-spirited creatures who adore the excitement of the game as much as their riders do.
For my first lesson I was expecting to have to get to know a whole set of complicated rules, but Avis Wotton, the Australian instructor, gets you playing straight away. She is brilliant, one of the world's best female players. "We're very lucky to have her," says Paul O'Leary, who runs the centre. "There aren't too many people with her expertise." O'Leary started Carrickmines' polocrosse team after seeing the game being played at Horetown Equestrian centre, in Co Wexford, in 1996. "I had seen how much fun people were getting out of it, and there's such a great team element to it that I wanted to get it going here."
Wotton says: "It's great as a family sport. Mums, dads and kids all play, and it's only as expensive as you want it to be. Most clubs have horses you can ride, and you don't have to get all the gear unless you really get into it." So with Australia leading the world at polocrosse, what keeps her in Ireland? "I'm enjoying watching it grow here. It's going very quickly" - there are polocrosse clubs in Birr, Carrickmines, Horetown, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford, Wexford and Wicklow - "and it's exciting to be a part of it."
Polocrosse starts with a rugby-style lineout, and in the beginning the horses know the game far better than you do, wheeling around to follow the ball before you've even realised it has sailed over your head. We played for such an exciting hour that it went in a flash, although it is hard to describe just how bad I was at it. Picking up the ball seemed impossible in that first lesson; I longed to emulate the nonchalant swoop-pick-and-bounce of my friend Eleanor, who owns Murdo and got me into the game.
Teams are made up of six players, with three on the pitch and three off, resting the horses. In polo, players ride more than one horse in a match, making it a much more expensive and, therefore, elite sport. There's nothing stuck-up about polocrosse: you're on the pitch for an exciting six minutes at a time - six minutes is the length of a chukka, or period - racing up and down the field, trying to scoop the ball into the net at the end of your stick, toss it to team mates and lob it between the goalposts. You're also trying to prevent the opposing team from doing the same thing. Tackling involves throwing yourself and your horse at players on the other team, hitting their sticks to knock the ball out of their baskets, and wheeling around to race back up the pitch. Played by beginners, it looks like a frenzied melee. Played with skill, it's astonishing to watch.
The first time I went to Carrickmines, the sight of some expert players made me think of turning and running. There was no way I was ever going to be able to be as good as them. But it doesn't matter. You don't have to be able to ride very well to play polocrosse. Many people's first lesson is also their first time on a horse, and it doesn't take long to pick up the basics. If you started in September, you could be playing in tournaments by next summer. And, as the teams are graded from A to D, there's room for everyone.
I watched a tournament at Birr Equestrian Centre, in Co Offaly. Horses and riders camp in fields, play polocrosse all day, then settle down for some quality relaxation in the evening. Lettie McCarthy, who as well as being a fan of polocrosse is a Labour councillor in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown, had a talent for finding field mushrooms; the morning's hangover cure turned out to be delicious fried mushrooms between slices of meltingly fresh bread, cooked over a stove in the open air while the horses munched grass around us. "What I think is gorgeous about the whole thing," she says, "is that you get such a mix of people and ages. You see the younger kids chatting to the teenagers and to the older players, and everyone gets on together."
Some of the players who were first on in the morning of day two probably needed a stiffer hangover cure than a mushroom sandwich. After a wet week the pitches soon turned rather slithery. As the day wore on, bruises and bumps were compared and tales of good hard play swapped. We spectators were full of enthusiasm, shouting out our encouragement, but I was itching to be back in the thick of it. It's an addiction that grabs all sorts of people. The riders are of all ages and come from all walks of life. The only thing they have in common, apart from a love of horses and a competitive edge, is that they are extremely friendly.
I had imagined (or rather dreaded) a weekend with the types who'd look down their noses at you if you had the wrong kind of jacket, boots, jodhpurs or socks, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I met farmers, carpenters, teachers, builders, a dental nurse, a writer and a barman. Someone pointed out a millionaire in a far corner of the field, but before I could track him down Birr scored, and I forgot about him.
Some riders had their own horses, some borrowed them. And although there is rivalry between teams, particularly between Carrickmines and Horetown, they still help each other out, whether with bandages for a horse's legs, with replacement reins or even, from time to time, with retrieving a horse that has broken out of its paddock and is investigating the tents.
As polocrosse is a relatively young sport in Ireland - the first club started in 1990 - we don't yet have senior teams that have been playing the game since infancy. But we're not doing too badly. At the last world cup, in Australia, we got a result. "Well, we didn't come last, and we beat England," is how it was put. Paul O'Leary thinks we should be in with a good chance at the 2011 world cup. Meanwhile, the Irish under-19s are off playing in America. "The biggest problem with polocrosse," says O'Leary, "is getting people to try it. Once they do they're hooked."
A polocrosse lesson at Carrickmines Equestrian Centre (01-2955990) costs €29. Or go to www.polocrosse.net and click the Ireland link. The polocrosse national finals are being hosted by the Wicklow Polocrosse Club on August 27th and 28th at Mount Usher, Ashford, Co Wicklow. Contact 086-8255596 or 086-8239530 for more information. Spectators welcome