Interview – New Guards Polo Club chairman Jock Green-Armytage
Feature
changing of the Guards Recently-appointed Guards Polo Club chairman Jock Green-Armytage provides an overview of the changes he and new CEO Neil Hobday have instigated over the winter, and confirms the rumours that the club will have control of Coworth Park’s polo operations on their nearby grounds
Herbert Spencer at Guards Polo Club
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changing of the guard at Guards Polo Club has brought major improvements to its high-goal polo facilities, the like of which have not been seen in years. It has all been decided and achieved within months “under new management” – that of board chairman Jock Green-Armytage and chief executive Neil Hobday, both of whom took office just last summer. Most importantly, Guards has completed much-needed and extensive improvements to its Queen’s Ground and Duke’s Ground at Smith’s Lawn in time for play this season. Complaints had been levelled for
Park Polo Club just outside Windsor Great Park, thus taking the pressure off Guards’ two premier home grounds. Canadian-born Jock Green-Armytage, 66, filled me in on these improvements, Guards’ other polo priorities and plans, as well as his own multi-national career when we met at the club recently. Jock was born 6 June 1945 in Winnipeg, capital of the Canadian province of Manitoba just north of the US-Canadian border. His father, a Winnipeg businessman, also owned a ranch on the shore of Lake Manitoba. “There was no polo in my family,” Jock says, “but some of the horses on the ranch were retired polo ponies, bought because they are so easy to handle. I learned to ride when I was five, but my polo playing came much later.” Having earned a BA degree in economics at McGill University in Montreal and then an MBA in finance at Columbia University
“We’ll run the existing fixtures at Coworth, operate a new academy run by Andrew Hine, and have use of their two excellent grounds for Guards events” – Jock Green-Armytage
Photograph by Herbert Spencer
years, and these were upheld with no more compelling evidence than at the rainsoaked Queen’s Cup final last year, when the ground didn’t hold up well at all and the game suffered as a result. An additional benefit this summer in terms of playing surfaces comes with the announcement in March that the club has gained the use of two more high-goal grounds by leasing those at neighbouring Coworth New men at the crease: Neil Hobday and Jock Green-Armytage inspect the drainage lines on Smith’s Lawn
in New York, Jock moved to the UK in 1970 to work with N M Rothschild & Sons. He became an executive director of Rothschild, responsible for the firm’s Asian operations, and relocated to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. “I did a bit of cross country riding in Malaysia,” Jock says, “then learned polo under Dr Vijay Lukshumeyah. Vijay had captained Cambridge and, at five goals, was at the core of the Sultan of Pahang’s team – and, interestingly, he learned his polo from the Australian Bob Skene, who lived in Malaysia before he went to the US and became a u Polo Times, April 2012
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