The UKPA Chairman, Dave Brookes, has announced his resignation from his position just a day before the start of the UKPA National Championships. In a statement to the membership he said he was resigning due his desire not to be associated with a potential ruining of the UKPA due to members’ actions regarding the penning of horses at Nationals.

He said that the decision to pen horses separately had been made due to fears over people’s safety and risk that the UKPA insurance might be invalid if no action was taken. As the membership protested about this decision and said they wanted to camp alongside their horses, Dave Brookes clearly felt he had no choice but to resign or be associated with something he honestly believed could endanger the members of the UKPA.

Dave Brookes has lead the association for, well we are ashamed to admit that we don’t know how long, but a good few years and has been involved in polocrosse from near the start of the sport in the UK. Under his leadership it grew to its present size and the UK team achieved a great deal of success on the international stage. This was crowned by the UK team achieving second place at the World Cup this year and also the UK winning the right to host the World Cup in 2011.

There is no doubt that the UK polocrosse community owns Dave Brookes a huge vote of thanks for the enormous amount of time and effort he has put into the sport over the last few years and it is a great shame to see him go in these sort of circumstances. Chairman do have to make tough decisions and hard choices and Dave was always willing to make these, even if they proved unpopular. He was a tireless promoter of polocrosse, doing everything from coaching grassroots to winning sponsorship for the game. Polocrosse Extreme would like to personally thank Dave for his hard work and dedication to polocrosse and wish him all the best for the future.

None of the rest of the UKPA executive were available for comment tonight so it is not known what plans are in place to replace Dave. To read the full statement, click here.