Ladies International 2019

The tournament was played at Manyatta polo club in Gilgil. We arrived at Manyatta Polo club on Thursday at lunchtime, where we were given lunch and then we each had 10 horses to try of which we could select 6 to play over the weekend. Megan Viljoen was mounted by players from Nairobi polo club, Pammy Greenshields was mounted by Manyatta polo club, Tiki Brown was mounted by both Manyatta and North Kenya polo clubs and Nunu Henderson was mounted by North Kenya Polo Club. It was requested that we half chukka our horses as it is felt that it is easier on the horses and reduces the chances of injury to the horses, which we were very happy to agree to. The format was that the 4 Zambian players were split up on the Friday and Saturday to play with 3 Kenyans in a 2 day knock out tournament, in order to give more Kenyan ladies an opportunity to play a higher level of ladies polo that is not often available to them. Each of these games were 4 chukkas. This Tournament was won by Izzy Parsons, Nunu Henderson, Natasha Timinskei, and Izzy Stichbury. On the Sunday a test match was played over 5 chukkas, this was played off scratch. The Kenyan team was: 1. Sacha Craig 3 2. Megan Griffiths 3 3. Izzy Parsons 7 4. Aisha Gross 4 The Zambian team was offered more horses for the Sunday match, by various people who were not playing on the Sunday, but we felt that as 2 of the ladies playing in the Kenyan team were short of horses and we had plenty of good horses to play it would not be good sportsmanship to take all the horses and that we would be better off playing the horses that we had played over the previous 2 days as we would know them better and therefore be able to play to a better standard. We felt that to take 1 possibly 2 horses would be acceptable but not 5 or 6. We also felt that it was disrespectful to the organizers of the tournament who had worked so hard to ensure that we were well mounted to do this. This was a very hard fought match played to a very high standard of polo, and was a great display of ladies polo, that kept the spectators of the edge of their seats as it could have gone either way throughout the match, with Kenya prevailing winning 8-6.