It would seem that the next World Cup is likely to be in South Africa, judging by a statement on the Polocrosse Association of South Africa (PASA) website. In a seemingly innocuous statement around the relaxing of rules about the number of horses that can be used in any one game in South Africa, the South African (and IPC) president Wessel Strauss says that the changes are partly being made due to the fact that they “are likely to be awarded the 2015 World Cup”.

Normally the decision as to where the next World Cup will be held is decided at the preceeding one, the 2011 World cup was awarded to the UK in 2007. Therefore no official announcement will be made on the 2015 World Cup until after the IPC convene just after the 2011 World Cup ends. However, South Africa obviously feel confident that they can winning any bidding process, or perhaps are confident that there will be no rival bids.

All the other World Cup countries could potentially bid for the World Cup but some are unlikely to do so. Australia hosted the first two World Cups and so probably wouldn’t bid again so soon, Ireland would be unlikely to bid and also unlikely to win so soon after the UK has held one and Zambia are only just playing in their first World Cup so would be unlikely to bid to hold the next one. Zimabwe, New Zealand and the USA could all realistically bid but whether they will remains to be seen. As the World Cup has now been held in Australia and Europe it is quite possible that next time it would be awarded to an African country, so as to spread it geographically around the world and South Africa would probably be favoured to Zimbabwe due to its political instability.

The decision to relax the rules around the number of horses each team can use is in itself quite controversial, as polocrosse is meant to be played on one horse per player, though there is some leeway at International level on this. However South Africa obviously wants to relax the rules in order to build up a stronger horse pool for the next World Cup but polocrosse purists may say it is just one step down a slippery slope which ends in the game being like polo, with multiple horses for each player being used.