HANDICAP numbers added up last weekend June at Rhone Hill in County Tyrone to what was, on paper, a sure win for Polo Wicklow in the lower league at the NIPC (Northern Ireland Polo Club) tournaments for the Inaugural Cup and LHK in the upper for the Spring Cup.

That is, however, what polo is all about: the higher handicapped teams, filled with some of the best known among amateur hitters aren’t always enough for all the silver to be going south.

While Rhone Hill’s Patrick Heffron and son Charles, Siobhan Herbst, and Gonzalo Lopez Vargas finished the qualifying matches ahead of Tyrone and LHK for the Spring Cup, El Nino’s Paul Monahan, Ian Mag, David McCulla and Alejandro entered last Sunday’s final in good position to take the Inaugural Cup back home to Dublin and the AIPC. Paul Monahan and company finished their lower league -4 to 0 goal qualifier against an apparently weaker Suitor Autofix with 7 goals to 5, while NIPC made it to the final on 4.5 goals to 3 from Polo Wicklow.

The El Nino Patron finished his first tournament since stepping into the role of AIPC President by losing to NIPC’s Tara Moore and daughter Lucca Moore, Jamie McCarthy and hard-hitter Keelan McCarthy.

“It is a fabulous pitch, really fast,” Monahan said later after the lower league final. The higher handicapped Polo Wicklow’s Siobhan Herbst, Robert Patton, Nicholson Boyd and Hanna Boyd went on to lose the subsidiary final with just 2 goals to 5 from Nicki Wilson, Logan Thompson, James Donnelly and Bee Bertrand of Suitor Autofix.

The lower league tournament was also a proving ground for entry level players Tara and Lucca Moore, Hanna Boyd and Ian Mag. “I felt that in both levels there was some very competitive and exiting polo and I was delighted that a number of people in the lower section were playing in their first competitive tournament,” Rhone Hill’s patron, Patrick Heffron, said of the tournament overall.

The Spring Cup 0 to 4 goal tournament was won by Rhone Hill on 14 cumulative goals to 10 from Tyrone’s Tommy Diaz, April Kent, Emily Beer and Facundo Matilla while Colm Kelliher, Jamie McCarthy, Gordon Keeling and Michael Connolly earned 6 goals.