Level playing feld

In a bid to recover the speed and magic of the game, Javier Tanoira, son of Gonzalo, has formed a new league set to revolutionise competitive tournaments

The All-Pro Polo League (APPL) was formed with the aim of organising worldwide tournaments involving only professional players. In the past 10 years, the quality of play in this area of the sport has deteriorated. We believe this is largely due to players of different levels – that is, patrons and professionals – being on the field together in competitive tournaments. To our mind, the only way to reverse this trend is by trying out new rules and to stage play between teams that are formed of participants of the same level.

This does not mean we are against patrons, or that we want to take them off the field. But after more than 30 years of patron-led polo being the state of play, we really do need a complete review of the rule book. The APPL believes the rules of polo, as in every sport, were written under the assumption that the players on the field have more or less the same level of play. In polo, though, the game has changed.

The modern version of the sport is a result of the pros trying to use the patrons and low-goal players on their team to block and ride off opponents so they can maintain possession of the ball. The first consequence of this style of play is that the speed of the action has decreased substantially, and so polo is no longer an exciting, attractive spectacle for fans around the world.

APPL tournaments are primarily designed for international players up to 25 years of age who are, or who want to become, professional players. The first tournament will take place in Buenos Aires in November 2015, with the rest of the schedule to be announced early in 2016. There will be, on average, four to six tournaments a year, and the locations we are considering are Buenos Aires, Palm Beach, Sotogrande, Dubai, UK and São Paulo.

A whole package of new rules – which have gained the support of the AAP, HPA, USPA and FIP – is going to be tested during these contests in order to speed up the game, make it more dynamic and give it greater rhythm. The most important of these will be that players won’t be allowed to change horses in the middle of the chukka, and umpires will strongly penalise blocking and interferences in every possible instance, as well as any player in possession of the ball who delays and slows down the action.

The aim of the tournaments is to round up the world’s best young talent, those we consider to have the greatest chance of becoming high-goal players. In Argentina, we have already formed a committee to choose the top 30 and invite them to be part of this project. There will still be one place available per team for a young foreign player with similar skills whose own polo association is interested in helping them achieve a better level of play. This is crucial in encouraging international competition at the highest level.

Indeed, having one country dominating the game on the world stage – as Argentina does nowadays – is one of the biggest barriers to the growth of polo globally. But if we start mixing the best Argentine players with players of the same age and skill from across the globe, then high-goal players from different countries will start appearing in a few years. And that can only be beneficial for the sport as a whole.