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The sticks are like hockey ones, but with a net on the end. These allow you to scoop up the ball, catch and carry it, and then fire it out, like you are slinging your hook.
‘Slide your hand down your stick,’ I was advised if I wanted my shots to go faster.
It’s still a game of immense athletic skill. It’s non-stop running, while to outwit your opponents you have to be agile and mentally sharp as well. The game was originally only played by men and it’s claimed that women’s lacrosse stared in Scotland, much later at St Leonards School around 1890. It’s ironic then that now, as Sam Patterson from the England men’s team told me, it often gets generalised as a women’s sport.
Men’s lacrosse today is much closer to the original game. While in the women’s version there is plenty of stick-to-stick action, but full body contact isn’t allowed (although it is sometimes inevitable), in the men’s game, all players have to wear protective armour and helmets, because full contact is permitted. It’s like American football with sticks. It’s one of the best team sports I have sampled. I can see why it’s billed as the fastest game on two feet.
The number of players taking up this sport in all age groups has increased in the last few years, helped by Manchester staging the World Cup in 2010. The USA won and will be favourites to defend their crown on home soil in Denver in 2014. However on the European stage, England currently rule the roost. The men’s team beat Ireland in the final staged in Amsterdam in July 2012, while England’s women beat Wales in their final. There are clubs up and down the country, so to find your nearest, visit one of the following websites: www.waleslacrosse.co.uk, www.lacrossescotland.com, www.irelandlacrosse.ie, www.englishlacrosse.co.uk or www.insidelacrosse.com
So we have polo, and we have lacrosse, two of the roughest and toughest team sports. However, they are not enough for those who put them together to make Polocrosse. It’s the challenge of lacrosse but on horseback, while for polo players it’s a chance to chuck in a chukka, to scoop the ball up and run with it before unleashing a shot, not from down by the horse’s side, but from up above the shoulders.
It’s a team sport that is now played all over the world. There are six riders on each side, with three from each team on the pitch at a time, and they swap after every six-minute chukka to give the horses a rest. Instead of a mallet, each rider carries a cane stick with a racquet head on the end of it. It looks like a very long squash racquet but the net on the head is loose. The ball is made of sponge rubber. The other big difference from polo is that in this sport, players only use one horse for the duration of the match. They don’t swap ponies during the game.
It is a bit like going onto a battlefield when you ride out in your helmet and the balls drop out of the sky like falling meteors. Scooping the ball off the ground while moving is also a challenge, but if you are a beginner like I was when I attended a Polocrosse centre in Kent, you play the game at trotting or even walking pace. It claims to be a sport for everyone. While at the top level it is physical and fast, at novice level it is played at a much slower speed. Regardless of ability you will be able to get the ball, and it is increasingly seen as a more entertaining way to develop riding skills. That’s how it all started.
One of the UK’s star players, Jason Webb, says the idea caught on at polo clubs because it was a way to spice up training sessions. ‘You can only hit a ball so far, and back in the day a lot of the riding was done in schools, and so you’d only get to hit the ball once and it would be up the other end of the pitch, whereas in Polocrosse you can do so much more with it: you can shimmy it around and carry it,’ he explained.
It’s also more suitable for riding schools with limited space, and it appeals to beginners because you can pick the ball up and run with it, rather than getting just one swing at the ball before you have passed it by. It is now recognised by the Pony Club as a horse sport which improves riding skills.
There is a knack to scooping up the ball when moving on a horse, and I had just about got it when bang, another stick came in and sent a judder up my arm. My stick was elevated towards the sky and the ball was now sailing away through the air. You see your opponents can get the ball off you by hitting your stick in an upwards direction. This is when I needed my teammates around me for protection, and it’s where the tactics come in to play. I did later catch a pass and at a snail’s pace of a trot, moved forward and lobbed an underarm bouncer which hit the post and went in.
South Africa won the World Cup, staged in Warwickshire in 2011. It was the third Polocrosse world championship. On the previous two occasions Australia had won, with the UK team coming second in 2007. For more information visit www.polocrosse.org.uk – here you will find information about the UK’s 16 clubs, from Scotland to Devon and from Wales to Kent.
PIGEONS
I end this chapter on my way to see the fastest long distance athletes of them all, those marathon travellers who are involved in one of the oldest sports, and whose place in our history is guaranteed. I am talking about the racing pigeon.
They may be the cousins of the feral mangy-looking ones that we see in towns and cities, which Ken Livingstone once described as rats with wings, but racing pigeons are very different. Many come from a long line of pedigree birds going back over 20 years. They are vaccinated against various diseases and parasites, and dine only at the top bird tables eating the finest food. You may well spot one in your garden at some point and as well as looking smarter, the racing pigeon will have a ring around one of its legs.
If you find one, you are looking at a remarkable bird – one which has made its mark on society throughout history. There is evidence that they were reporters for the ancient Olympics in Greece, flying the results out to the surrounding communities. But it’s their subsequent use in wars that really underlined their heroic status. They were used by the ancient Egyptians in the siege of Rome. A racing pigeon brought news to England of the death of Napoleon after the battle of Waterloo, and over a century later nearly half a million birds served their country in the two world wars. They were a vital part of the war effort.
They had proved so effective at getting messages back home from the trenches in the First World War that at the outbreak of World War Two, some 7,000 of Britain’s pigeon fanciers gave their birds to the military to act as carriers. The National Pigeon Service was formed and as a pigeon fancier himself, my Uncle Don was allowed to stay at home rather than being sent to fight. It was more important that he was supplying and training his pigeons. During the war, pigeon lofts were built at RAF and army bases and nearly a quarter of a million birds were used. All RAF bombers and reconnaissance aircraft carried pigeons in special waterproof baskets, and in case the plane had to ditch into the sea, a message was placed in a container on the pigeon’s leg so it could fly back and report what had happened. Many more were dropped by parachute to help the French, Dutch and Belgian resistance.
The intelligence they ferried back saved thousands of lives at a time when using a radio was far too dangerous. Pigeons themselves though carried a risk. As their reputation spread, being caught with a racing pigeon meant death by German firing squad.
It wasn’t just the British who had cottoned on to their value. The homing pigeon was also used by American, Canadian, and German forces all over the world. And their work didn’t go unrecognised. СКАЧАТЬ