Some members of Perth Cycle Polo recently travelled to the town of Kwinana to teach kids how to play bike polo.  Our guest reporter, Mike Critch, tells us how it went.

Members of Perth Cycle Polo were invited down to the Town of Kwinana’s Youth Space to host a workshop for the April School Holidays. The 4hr workshop introduced the rapidly growing sport of Hardcourt Bicycle Polo to the young attendees, captivating their imaginations and harnessing their natural abilities through a series of on and off-bike skill sessions.  The workshop started off with the basics; ball and mallet control, passing and dribbling and finally shooting at goals and it wasn’t long before the hungry swarm of kids became eager for some actual real polo action. Not to deny their requests, PCP ran through the basics of a polo match from the joust, to tap-ins and the importance of heckling on the sidelines (albeit censored versions for under 12′s).

With their new found ability of everything ball and mallet, the kids got down to business and began dual wield polo: war-hammers in one hand, bike in the other. And they took to this like fish to water. Not satisfied with dribbling a ball between cones and riding, some members of the group grew impatient and started slamming balls into the Goalhole, at their own accord, like it was going out of fashion. To keep the crowd happy, PCP showed the little tackers the game of bottom bracket.  Once we were satisfied that there was a reasonable skill level across all the attendees, it was time to have a proper game.

And what a game it was! I don’t know if it was the remarkable coaching, or the natural ability and dexterity kids have on a bike but they were sure impressive for first timers (better than most of our first times!). They were passing, calling for plays and striking like little ANZAC’s, even slipping a couple past one of the PCP members (we won’t mention any names!!) who was sitting in goals making sure there were no ‘cheese sausage’ moves taking place.  One kid pulled of a spectacular cross Crandall (some things can’t be taught) which made me hopeful that one day Hardcourt Cycle Polo will indeed become an Olympic sport.

So a great day had by all. The workshop was received well by the Town of Kwinana, the kids attending and was a great experience for Perth Cycle Polo members to share their knowledge. Special thanks go out to Kwinana Youth Space officer Arbie Pattiselanno and PCP members Ned Collins and Alex Forgie, who not only coached like champions but leant out their bikes to the kids to get them used to riding actual polo steeds.

by Mike Critch

Perth Cycle Polo

Smiling during a game is good.  Laughing is even better.

This is a community service announcement brought to you by GOALHOLE.

Photograph by Oliver Wykeham

My sources in Perth tell me you will not find anyone more lazy than Yohei in Western Australia and possibly the entire country.   All he can manage to do besides playing polo is work 2 jobs, study full time and also go cycle touring in far off dangerous places such as New Zealand and Tasmania.  Yohei really needs to put a bit more effort into life and try to occasionally pass the ball.  (Sorry Yohei – they made me say that.)  Here’s a little more about Yohei.

City:  Perth, Australia

Team:  Godzilla Symphony

Years played:  3 years

Super power: Godzilla Power

Favourite heckle: It’s in Korean

Bike:  Vispa, free wheel with dual brake and 25:16 ratio

Mallet:  Fixcraft pole with uncapped head with cut-out sides

Protection:  Gloves, knee pads and glasses

What do you love most about bike polo?
People

If you missed our last player profile on Andrew Tipene, you can access it here

By Virginia Castellan

GOALHOLE is looking for contributors.

Do you have an idea for a post that you want to write or that you want GOALHOLE to cover?

Have you taken any photos you want to share?

Do you want to do player profiles or bike checks for your city?

Do you like making videos and would like to make video’s of the above?

We are looking for original work only that has not been posted on any other website.

If you are interested, please send an email to goalholepolo@gmail.com

Name: Nigel Tipene
City: T-Town – Taupo, Nth Island, New Zealand
Frame/Fork: 1990 Milazo Rock’n'Comp Fully rigid cro-mo frame
Bars: Original Cheap Taiwan steel flat bars
Seat/Post: Phillips 0′ Alloy
Pedals: Shimano Clipless/Odessey Bmx
Cranks/Bottom Bracket: Truvative DH cranks and B/B
Brakes: Deore XT V-brakes and levers with custom cable splitter (Ed: I saw this set up personally and it is sick!)

Sprocket: 20th
Freewheel/Rear cog: Freewheel with Magic Chain set up
Front Wheel (Rim,Hub,Tyre): Original Deore hub circa 1990 – Old Skool Araya 45mm wide rim 36 hole
Rear Wheel (Rim,Hub,Tyre): Original Deore hub circa 1990 – Deep section Araya Triple wall Rim 36 hole

Why did you choose this bike?
Cause it has “OLD SKOOL KOOL” and has an amazing geometry for Polo.

How long have you played on this bike for? Have you played on anything else?
Played for about a year with this bike. I have had about 6 polo bikes in the past, but this bike is the best so far.

What are the best things about your bike?
The steel frame, with the old MTB geometry. It handles so well, and has a pink squiggle 1990′s paint job. Also I think it’s the only 1 of it’s kind in the world of Polo I know of.

What are the worst things about your bike? What would you change? 
Love everything about the bike, and I spent time making it bullet proof, and wouldn’t change a thing.

If you missed last week, we took a look at Vive’s bits.

By Oliver Wykeham

In last weeks edition of the City Report we talked with Nathanael Fournier from Wellington, New Zealand. This week we talk to Neil Waterhouse about bike polo in Adelaide, Australia

How long has polo been played in Adelaide?
The blog site was setup on the 9th Nov 2008 and our first games were played for the 7th Dec 2008. 15 people who had never played bike polo before showed up. That’s the most organised Radelaide polo has ever been. Only half of them came back the next week

How many regular players do you have?
10-15 regulars.

How often do you play?
Every week on Sunday afternoon. We have struggled to get a weeknight up and running due to a lack of a suitably lit court.

Tell us about your courts
We played at 2 other locations before settling on the current venue. The dubious quality of the surface gives us unofficial license to play there. There are some truly impeccable playing surfaces around the Adelaide parklands but we would surely be hung drawn and quartered if we ever laid a skid mark on them.   We have 1,2 or 3 courts of 35m x 15m.  The surface is cracked green painted asphalt tennis court with gumnuts and sticks. We use portable edging to close off one long side

How many different courts do you use?
Usually just the one. Sometimes we loiter after hours in basement carparks of offices and shopping centres.

Do you have lights?
No.

Do you pay to hire them?
We “hired” them for the AHBPC11 but even that was free.

Have you had any tournaments or demos lately?  Do you have any tournaments or demos coming up?
Our last tournament was AHBPC11 which rocked but burned us out a little bit. Colin is our master tournament organiser, look out for a pre/post worlds tournament this year.

Do you have a league? Would you consider having one?
It has been suggested but nothing  has been implemented.

What have you found works the best to get new players?
Drunken nights out with enthusiastic unicyclists. Yelling at the cyclists riding by, especially the ones that stop and gawk.  Signage at the court and generally approaching those who take interest.

Tell us an interesting face about your city
Our closest grog shop to the courts is in a suburb called Kent Town.

Questions by Virginia Castellan

Answers and photographs by Neil Waterhouse

Look out for next weeks City Report featuring another polo playing city of Australia or New Zealand.

The King of the Cage tournament was held in Auckland, New Zealand on 14 and 15 April 2012.  Here’s a report on what happened from our guest reporter Down Low Polo‘s Craig Johnston from Christchurch.

Auckland’s King of the Cage tournament (KOTC) attracted 11 teams. Australia once again showed their support for trans-Tasman bike polo with the Melbourne crew attending this.  The two day tournament was arranged as an “own teams” tournament on Saturday and a “mix up” tournament on Sunday.  The format for Saturday was a three pool randomly drawn round robin for the morning to seed teams into a double elimination bracket for the afternoon.  Having only one court (without floodlights) required 8 minute games be played out for most of the day, whilst a bit on the short side I don’t believe that adding more time to any of these games would have changed the results.  The final result for Saturday was that an Australian team once again won a Kiwi bike polo tournament but it took an epic 45 minute game to get there.

Sunday started with caffeine at one of the sponsors cafes and wandered lazily into a “mix up” round robin tournament which established random teams who would then play together in a double elimination bracket.  Whilst not as hard fought as the Saturday games this was a great way to play with others, learn and share skills, more like well organised pick-up than a full on tournament.

Taming the beast that is Howe Street cage/courts was fairly challenging for newcomers. It has a camber and a channelled kerb which resemble playing on a suburban street.  The ball rolls into the channel whenever given the chance, extracting it is clearly something the locals had dialled.  Gaps in the chainlink fence were boarded up with re-purposed pallet timber and goals were made of the same material in good polo DIY fashion.  There was even some netting laying around for those goals but never the motivation to fit it. Did that matter?  Not one bit, the game play was pretty damn fair and the trust of players to do the right thing was evident over the entire weekend.

When asked to describe the tournament experience by a friend of mine I answered “Home baked”.  I meant it in all seriousness.  Like all home baking it was full of goodness, put together with thought, care and consideration and done by people you know, in small parts it was a little rough at the edges but all the right ingredients were there in the correct order and the hard work was done in the right spirit.  It was another great NZ polo tournament adding flavour to the others we have here.

NZ polo is in great shape at the moment and KOTC did it’s very best to highlight this fact.  Congratulations to all the Auckland players for hosting a successful weekend of polo, you guys and girls were wonderful and should be well proud!

By Craig Johnston
Photos courtesy of Gene Armstrong

This week we are taking a gander at Vive’s bits, specifically his custom Whiskey 3 polo bike. The first time I saw this weapon was at the Taupo Tapout last year where I got to witness Vive zooming all over the court on this thing, making crazy tight turns and stopping at the drop of a hat. Without further ado here are Vive’s bits.

Photo courtesy of Symes Cycles

Name: Vive Renganathan
City: Melbourne
Frame/Fork: Symes Whisky 3
Bar/Stem: Nuke Proof Warhead flat / Kore B52 stem
Seat/Post: Nuke Proof Plasma Grid saddle / Controltech Team issue 2 post.
Pedals: NC17 CR44
Cranks/Bottom Bracket: Raceface Respond 170mm, X type external bottom bracket
Sprockets: 38t (included with crank set) for riding around, FSA 34t for polo
Freewheel/Rear cog: Surly cogs- 16t for riding around, 20t for polo
Front wheel: Mavic XM317 rim, Hope Pro 2 hub, Schwalbe Kojak 2.0
Rear wheel: Mavic XM317 rim, Hope Pro 2 hub, Schwalbe Marathon Plus 1.75
Brakes: London modded Avid FR5 lever, Avid mechanical disc brake sets 160mm rotors

Why did you choose this bike?
The Whisky 3 is the third in the series of custom polo bikes built by frame builder /poloist, Scott Symes. The bike is pretty much a road frame with rear horizontal dropouts for 26″wheels. Centre of front wheel to the centre of the rear wheel measures around 100cm. The turning circle is quite tight, great for when you need to double back to goals quickly!

How long have you played on this bike?
I can’t quite remember. Would have been a month after the 2011 nationals. So, about a year?

What are the worst things about your bike?
What would you change?
Can’t think of anything I dislike about the bike, although most people who have ridden it have commented about the crazy toe overlap. I would like to add some sort of guard for the disc rotors. They can get warped during games and I have already replaced the rear rotor. There are threaded holes built onto the frame for this purpose. I am also thinking about going clipless but am still weighing out the pros and cons.

Photos courtesy of Chris Tomoya and Damon Rao

If you missed last week, we took a look at Donny’s bits.

By Oliver Wykeham

This is the first in a new series which looks at the bike polo scene in several cities in Asia. In Australasia, we hear a lot about European and North American bike polo, but relatively little about polo in countries that are geographically closer to us like Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. Here’s our chance to learn a bit more.

Badminton courts are used as Kaohsiung's day court

We were lucky to have two KBPA+ players, Mark and Yu at this year’s Australasian Championships in Perth.  I was really glad my team played their team fairly early on, because they just kept getting better and better as the tournament went on.  Mark has kindly agreed to answer my questions about bike polo in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Tell us a little bit about Kaohsiung
Kaohsiung, the biggest harbour and second largest city, is in the southern part of Taiwan. 1.5 million population in city center, 2.8 million in whole county. The weather is hot and humid, but the sunny days is much more than Taipei, the northern part of Taiwan.

Kaohsiung has a famous “Love River”, you can take a boat ride along. A small but vivid mountain call “Tsai-shan” or “Shou-shan”.

From the 2011 Takao Cup held in Kaohsiung

When and how did polo start here?
I think it was the first seasons of 2010. Young guys started to play polo under the bridge of No. 1 Super Highway.

How many people play in your city?  How often do you play?
Probably 9 to 12 regularly players and we play once or twice a week.

Tell us about your courts
Our regular night court, under the bridge, is asphalt pavement in 30 x 20 m. And we do have 2 more day courts with nice cement or PU pavement. We don’t need to pay to play, but have to yield to the original users when playing the day courts, they’re hockey or badminton court actually.

The Kaohsiung night court is underneath a bridge

What have you found works to get new people playing polo in your city?
We didn’t do much works to get new player. But we like to do more in the future.

Are there any other clubs nearby?  How far away is the nearest city that plays?
There are probably just 3 cities that have regular players. Taipei in the north, Taichung in the middle, Kaohsiung in the south.  Taichung is 250 Km’s away form Kaohsiung. And 200 Km more the Taipei.

Do you play with other clubs in your country often?  If so is this for tournaments for just casual?
We have once a year’s tournament, and one or two casual games a year.

From the 2011 Takao Cup held in Kaohsiung

Has your city hosted any tournaments or are you hosting any soon?  Please tell us about them.  Are they just for locals or do other people in your country come?
We, the KBPA, host almost any open tournaments in Taiwan since 2010. And we’ll host the third “Takao Cup” in November or December 2012. We totally welcome you. When the arrangements are done, I’ll invite you guys to come. I actually did invite Australia last year. We had guests from Bejing, China and Japan. Here’s the links http://kbpapolo.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/result-takaocup2011/

Have many people in your club have played in other countries?  Where have they played?
Some players have played in Tokyo, Japan and Perth, Australia.

You played at AHBPC 2012, where do you think your city is in terms of skill level compared to the teams you played against?  What was it like playing against Australians?
I think you’re way ahead of us. More speed, more intense, more technical, and rougher. In my opinion, we, Taiwan players should push harder. But I enjoyed very much when play with you and learned a lot from you.

From the 2011 Takao Cup held in Kaohsiung

 

By Virginia Castellan

What can I say about Andrew Tipene?  Apart from the fact that the man seems to run on a combination of cider and vodka, Andrew is just your regular Kiwi living it up in Australia.  Occasionally found face down on the floor of pubs, Andrew also managed to get his entire team completely lost riding home from a bar in Taupo, turning a 5km journey into 15km.  Here’s a little more about Andrew.

City:  Melbourne, Australia

Team:  Polobears

Years played:  2 years

Super power:  Double wind up

Favourite heckle: Stay in goals bitches

Bike:  Surly frame, freewheel with dual brake and a 36:21 ratio

Mallet:  7075 ski pole with uncapped, closed sides head

Protection:  Gloves and glasses

What do you love most about bike polo?
The bikes.

If you missed our last player profile on Jamie Barber, you can access it here.

By Virginia Castellan