Black Bears  15 – 8 Desert Palm

La Dolfina Scone 13 – 7  Shoreline

Thai Polo/Get A Drip 13 – 8 Gaston

The second day of the Cartier Queen’s Cup saw some big scores, some even bigger hitters of the ball and a handful of yellow cards. First up was Black Bears v Desert Palm on the Castle Ground at Flemish Farm with its backdrop of Windsor Castle. This season Guy Schwarzenbach is playing alongside Gonzalo and Facundo Pieres and they did not disappoint. Even Facundo in his post-match interview admitted to being slightly surprised  at how well the Bears were playing so early into the tournament. Desert Palm were a strong team but the Black Bears delivered some impressive four-player polo and the result was an 15-8 win.

The master of the Queen’s Cup, 10x winner Adolfo Cambiaso was in action at Coworth Park, playing alongside his daughter Mia for the first time in this tournament, in the La Dolfina Scone team. Their opponents, Adebayo Karim’s Shoreline may have been making their Queen’s Cup debut but they were not fazed by their opponents and stayed in contention until the latter stages of the game.  

The final match of the day was a feisty contest at Guards Polo Club between Thai Polo/Get A Drip and another Queen’s Cup team making its tournament debut, Gaston. The rain was pretty much continual, while the teams were pretty evenly matched until the fourth chukka. Two yellow cards for Gaston’s Juan Martin Nero saw him visit the sin bin for 2 minutes in this chukka and Thai Polo took advantage of their player superiority. Gaston then struggled to recover from this setback although they remained focussed until the final whistle.

Images copyright Pablo Ramirez