The Philippines looked to have the edge early on as 4-goaler Augustus Aguirre commanded play in mid-field. Tommy Bitong, Ed Lopez and Santi Juban all scored exciting goals for the Philippines, but Brunei’s efficiency in front of the goal kept Philippines playing catch-up and was eventually the deciding factor.
In the second game, Malaysia were caught asleep at the start of the match. Indonesia started very fast and added 4 goals to their 1 1/2 goal handicap advantage. At the first half-chukka break, Malaysia went off wondering what was going on, as they trailed 1 – 5 1/2. They need not have worried. By half-time, they had caught up, and cruised past the inexperienced Indonesian side to win 11 – 7 1/2.
In the FIP Official’s tent, we had many challenges. The timing system providers (from Malaysia) could not make it work. Timing was by stopwatch, with no display for the players to see. The digital scoreboard looked nothing like what they had promised and didn’t work till the second game, and we instead had to improvise a manual scoreboard. The ‘expert’ they provided to handle the scoreboard and timing, also from Malaysia, knows nothing about polo, had to be instructed every step of the way, but could not even get the chukka numbers right.
There was no bell and we had to improvise with hooters and a bar bell. Even before the game started, one of our umpires got dumped by a too-fresh umpire pony. Medical attention and a back-up were needed.
That was Day 1. We coped, as we always do, because as a FIP team we are prepared for anything. Looking the bright side, things will definitely improve.
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