The International Polocrosse Council (IPC) member countries (and we believe representatives from the smaller associate countries such as France and Canada) meet today to discuss the running of international polocrosse and also to vote in a new IPC board. There is currently a temporary board in place after a number of the previous board stepped down a few months ago after a dispute with various member countries.

Many polocrosse fans are probably fairly unfamiliar with the IPC. It often seems to be fairly invisible to your average polocrosse player and supporter and the general view of people we speak to seems to be that they feel the IPC does very little. That is not entirely true, it is quite heavily involved with the running of World Cups but outside of those events it is indeed fairly quiet. Also, a lot of what it does and decides upon for World Cups always seems to only be shared with the actual teams at the World Cup, it is all done through meetings at the event itself or through emails. There are never any public announcements or much information put in the public domain – hence why there is probably a perception that it is fairly inactive even at these events.  

As a new board comes into place we would hope they will come up with some priorities for themselves to move the sport forwards. We are very aware that everyone involved in the sport of polocrosse is a volunteer and does their role for love rather than money (trust us – we really know that! Our volunteering CV is pretty extensive and has over twenty years of experience on it). However, we also believe that there needs to be significant progress in a number of areas of the sport to take it to the next level. We are seeing some fantastic play on the pitches during the world cup and players and horses have trained very hard for this event; it deserves a bigger audience as a sport but in order to get a bigger audience and not then get into further problems there is a lot of work to do.

We do not like to just sit on the side lines and fling mud, we do like to be constructive and suggest how things can improve, especially as we are very aware how much work everyone from all countries put into this sport. Therefore, we thought we would come up with our own six priorities for the sport and we hope we will see the IPC come up with something similar soon (or they can just steal ours – we really aren’t precious!)

Priority 1: Focus on horse welfare

Equestrian sport is under a lot of scrutiny and pressure at the moment. Polocrosse has so far managed to fly below the radar because of its size but we have seen real pressure put on sports like racing and dressage and also see a lot of criticism of other sports like polo and jumping. What we ask horses to do is in some causes far more extreme than what is being asked in those sports and we can rightly celebrate what incredible equine athletes they are. However, we all know that we can get incidents with horses falling or being brought down by collisions. We have probably all sadly seen a horse put to sleep after a playing incident so we would like the IPC to do all they can to minimise the risk of this happening in the future. No horse should lose its life for the pursuit of sport, regardless of whether if that was what it was bred or trained for.

We are very pleased that there is a lot of talk at the world cup about horse welfare and clearly the organisers are determined to minimise the misuse of aids such as whips and spurs (we haven’t heard any mention of misuse of bits yet but we would suggest that does need to be thought about as a sport as it is becoming a bigger issue in other equestrian sports).

However, there is still a way for the sport to go if we want to be able to share our sport with the public at large. We have been stood on the side lines and heard people who are obviously not that familiar with the sport say things like “The poor horse” when players come together at bad angles so we need to see bad ride offs (such as hits behind the saddle) and cutting in front and behind of players completely stopped – as ultimately those are the pieces of the games that will both attract criticism and will seriously injure a horse (and a player).

 A way of doing that would be to toughen up the penalties when players commit these fouls and also be harder on near misses – in polo they are much stricter about cutting across the line of the ball even at what we might consider a safe distance and so polocrosse needs to consider what it actually feels is acceptable so as to avoid players even considering carrying out a dangerous move. Sometimes it does feel in polocrosse that when players actually cause a collision it is penalised (though sometimes fairly lightly) but if they just miss by a few inches it is all fine and play just carries on.

Priority 2: Have a focus on developing and growing sport

The IPC has never, to our knowledge, had a growth or development strategy and this is definitely needed if we are not going to just see a continuation of the status quo, or even worse a shrinking of the sport. There has been growth in some areas of the world, with new countries coming on board in Europe and South America but that is really due to the efforts of people in those countries and support from their neighbours in the UK, Ireland and the USA, plus help from players from around the world who we know have hosted players in their own countries. There has been no IPC involvement to date that we know of.

We know from our own experience how hard it is to grow a sport when you have no money and no time but there has to be an ambition to do so. There is only one playing association in the world that has a sizeable membership (which is Australia) and many countries have under 100 players. The IPC needs to work with its members around the world to see how they can grow the sport in their own countries and also how we can get more countries playing.

It is wonderful to see that this world cup has TV coverage in its host nation. The IPC also needs to think about how it can get more media coverage for the sport in general and get footage from World Cups shown around the world, as that in turn attracts more players and more sponsors.

Priority 3: Be visible and communicate far better to the entire polocrosse playing community

We don’t feel it is unfair to say the IPC has historically not been great at communication. They do have website, www.internationalpolocrosse.org , but they don’t tend to make any public announcements to the polocrosse playing community at large. Instead, they tend to send emails to the various IPC member countries and normally the information that is contained within these (and this is normally just information about world cups) filter out in the wider community through word of mouth.

The IPC also does not, to our knowledge, publish an annual report or even any accounts, despite each member country paying it a membership fee each year. A new IPC board needs to look at producing information like that and putting it in the public domain so it is accessible to all and people can understand better what they are doing for the sport.

In other sports the people at the top of the sport are known to the wider membership and will communicate on key matters and polocrosse needs that as well if it is grow and thrive. We think most players in the sport would struggle to name the current members of the IPC board or indeed any previous ones.

We are an international sport with players and countries around the world and we need an IPC board that will take a modern approach to communication and be a visible presence in the sport.

Priority 4: Rewrite the IPC rule book with additional guidance and less interpretation of penalties for fouls

In our experience polocrosse as a sport is not always great at written documents. Instead, a lot of pieces seem to be verbal rather than written and when you actually read documents like the IPC rulebook you discover that certain things that you thought were rules are not actually in there.

We don’t believe the rule book has been comprehensively rewritten in many years and we think it does need urgently doing. It is too vague and contradictory at points, particularly when it comes to the awarding of penalties, and some rules need additional detail and guidance to help umpires and players understand what is acceptable.  

For example, the penalties for dangerous riding can be penalty 1,2,3,4 or 6. And yet if you look at the definition of the penalties at the back of the rule book it clearly states for penalty four (a free goal) “If in the opinion of the umpire a player commits a dangerous foul, the side fouled shall be allowed one goal.” That is not the only example, there are a number of rules that contain the word “dangerous” but then could result in a penalty 1,2 or 3 rather than a penalty 4 which would seem quite contradictory.

The penalty for intentionally hitting a horse with a racquet can similarly be 1,2,3,4 or 6, while the penalty for a wild or uncontrolled hit to a player or horse is penalty 2,3,4 or 6. However, we believe in all countries any hit to a player will be a free goal (a penalty 4) whereas if the horse is hit the penalties awarded will vary – so it is interesting the rulebook does not actually reflect reality in terms of player hits and also interesting that horses are not treated equally.

We also think that in some cases there is a real need for more detail. For example, rule 33 states:

No player may cross another player except at such a distance as does not involve the possibility of collision or danger to either player.

We think different umpires, players and countries have different interpretations of what constitutes a safe distance to cross and it would probably be useful for the IPC to clarify whether they feel it is safe to try and cross at half a horses’ length at flat out gallop or whether you should really be leaving one or two horses between you just to minimise the possibility of a coming together of legs and the resulting falls.

So we feel that one of the first jobs of the new IPC board should be getting a comprehensive rewrite of the rule book done and making it a much more user friendly and clearer document to help ensure consistency around the world.

(if anyone wants to look at the international rule book it can be found here https://www.internationalpolocrosse.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/IPC-Rules-Amended-April-2019.pdf )

Priority 5: Improve the overall standard of umpiring at World Cups

As everyone is probably aware the umpiring at this world cup is attracting a some negative attention. Not all the criticism is entirely fair and we don’t think it is fair for people to start publicly attacking individual umpires even if there have been wrong calls. All the umpires are ultimately volunteers (none are getting paid a penny that we know of) and they are trying to do their best in what is a very high pressure environment. As we all know the game moves incredibly fast and in real time it can be very hard to see something. It is very easy to watch back a video and then spot the fouls but having been watching all the matches in real time we are struggling to think of one call where we heard a significant portion of the crowd dispute the umpire’s call.

Our concern is if fans do not show respect to umpires then that can lead to players not showing respect to umpires – and ultimately that probably sees the sport end up like football with crowds of players surrounding umpires and shouting at them, which we certainly don’t want!

That all said, there does need to be improvement in the standard of umpiring. We believe the biggest challenge is that for the World Cup you have umpires coming from all the different countries and a lot of countries do things slightly different in terms of areas of the games like line ups and also what penalty to award for certain fouls. You also have a range of experience in the umpiring group and some are far more used to dealing with all the different world cup players than others. We have seen that some umpires do not use the correct signals from the rule books to signal for fouls such as crossing the centre line – this is not necessarily a huge problem for the players (who can hear them) but can be confusing for spectators and also just shows there is a lack of consistency and training if something as simple as signals are not used correctly. So there needs to be more work done at the World Cup itself and preceding it to make sure standards are the same and all the umpires feel confident with how things are going to work. That way you get a better umpiring experience at the event itself.   

The other thing that has to be a priority is making sure the umpires have the best possible umpire horses. On day one of this world cup we saw a number of horses really backing off from the front of line ups and making it hard for the umpires to throw in or police the line up. We also say umpire horses being a bit nervous about the crowd and aspects of event around the pitch. Umpires have to have the perfect equine partner, who will be unphased by the playing horses and everything else, not just a horse from the reserve pool.

Priority 6: Decide what should be happening with line ups

Line ups at this World Cup have been messy and it really needs to be made clear how they will be improved.

Many people seem to feel that the umpires are giving players too much leeway in terms of movement and crossing the T and they should just come in and stand shoulder to shoulder until the umpire throws in, rather than still be moving up the T when the ball is thrown. This is what the IPC Rulebook says should be happening and in theory we would agree with them but we are also aware players and horses are very pumped up and also we don’t know if part of the reason they are moving is because the horses are very used to walk in line outs and so asking them to stand still might not work that well. However, the rulebook is clear that no player should be moving to gain advantage until the ball leaves the umpires hand and so that is what should be happening and right now it definitely isn’t.

The other option we believe the IPC is discussing is a second “Wait” line – where the players stop and wait and the umpire calls them in when they are ready to throw, so they would still be moving when the umpire throws. We have seen this in test match series and it does seem to work quite well. However, we would also say that given that many less experienced players and horses can come in and stand on the T and await the umpires throw, we don’t quite know why the top level should do things differently and we slightly worry that you will just end up with all grades having this slightly chaotic approach, with players rushing up the T’s at the umpires (which we never feel is very fair on the umpire horses either – and you do see them sometimes back off when the players rush in). So if that is going to be the approach then consideration also needs to be given to what speed players are allowed to come in at and how do you make sure it works for all levels – where you might have players who will not move up the T as quickly as each other.      

There is a lot going on in a line up It may be that the IPC needs to consider whether actually having two horse mounted umpires is enough to police the game fairly at the top level. They could look at having additional officials pitch side to spot some of the fouls around the line up. We would even consider whether one of your horse mounted umpires really needs to be the one throwing in or whether they would be better deployed elsewhere and be able to look at the players properly, rather than worrying about whether their own throw is straight and coping with their horse reacting to the horses in the line up.

So those are our priorities for the IPC. We will see what happens following these elections!