Seb Dawnay
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I wish to comment on Sebastian Dawnays artical on professional umpiring.
I play in Australia and we as a nation have one of the highest disposable incomes in the world so when I tell the polo community not to load polo with unnecessary expenditure it is not from a struggling debt ridden country but from one of the "per capta" wealthiest countries in the world.
The biggest problem with our sport in Australia is getting young athletic men to play the game . It is cost of the game that stops them. The last thing that polo needs is additional costs being loaded onto it. Keep it simple and keep it as cheap as possible or we will end up with a sport that is so small that it is irrelevant. In Australia the funding of the game almost exclusively comes from players. The game in Australia has no capacity to generate income and of recent years and has become smaller and less capacity to pay for things.
As to the umpiring by ones peers I have no problem. As we all umpire one another the umpiring is self regulating. I have played at Ellerston in the "Glory days" and there was more decent about the professional umpire than the players. This could be because the players answer to their peers and their peers are very critical. The Professional Umpire answers to the Tournament organiser. He is not as intimately involved in the actual games so the assessment of the Umpires performance is done by someone not as close to the game.. Sometimes the Professional Umpire cuts slack to the losing team which seems of little consequence to him but can be critical.
I play in Australia and we as a nation have one of the highest disposable incomes in the world so when I tell the polo community not to load polo with unnecessary expenditure it is not from a struggling debt ridden country but from one of the "per capta" wealthiest countries in the world.
The biggest problem with our sport in Australia is getting young athletic men to play the game . It is cost of the game that stops them. The last thing that polo needs is additional costs being loaded onto it. Keep it simple and keep it as cheap as possible or we will end up with a sport that is so small that it is irrelevant. In Australia the funding of the game almost exclusively comes from players. The game in Australia has no capacity to generate income and of recent years and has become smaller and less capacity to pay for things.
As to the umpiring by ones peers I have no problem. As we all umpire one another the umpiring is self regulating. I have played at Ellerston in the "Glory days" and there was more decent about the professional umpire than the players. This could be because the players answer to their peers and their peers are very critical. The Professional Umpire answers to the Tournament organiser. He is not as intimately involved in the actual games so the assessment of the Umpires performance is done by someone not as close to the game.. Sometimes the Professional Umpire cuts slack to the losing team which seems of little consequence to him but can be critical.
There are too many people attempting to obtain an income from what is one of the smallest games in the world.