"Your intrepid H&C team isn’t afraid of early starts. Oh no. But combine a pre-dawn start with the car thermometer reading -4 (in London) and I was a bit scared.

A polo player I am not, but when I arrived at the Royal Ascot Polo Club (note, -6 by this point) for my Discover Polo course, I was relieved that there were others with much less horse experience than me.

Grasping the basics

The morning started in the tent at the club. Sadly no heating so the group crowded round a heat lamp for our first class. White haired grandfather figure Robert Burke, head coach at Ascot Park, barked out the basic rules. His teaching is more akin to a brisk army lecture than an informal Saturday morning course, but using his board and eight model horses, he demonstrated the basics of polo.

Occasional sudden questions were thrown at us; minor humiliation for anyone getting it wrong. I’d know. “No! Not the answer! You’re not an accountant I hope!”

So Robert explained the main principles of polo; basically, it's all about right of way. If you hit the ball and make off after it, no one is allowed to cut you up, but they can bump you off the line from the side. He didn’t talk much about scoring, clearly we weren’t expected to do much of that.

Once he was satisfied us bozos had a basic grasp of the rules, “It’s really very simple, just like driving, think of the line of the ball as a road,” we were allowed to move into the arena. Polo is not played on grass during the winter but instead in huge purpose-built arenas about eight times the size of a normal arena.

Crate crunch

We stood on crates to practice our swing. I knew that being a leftie would prove challenging - polo does not allow you to hold the stick in the left hand for safety reasons – but I had underestimated the chasm between the brain giving the right hand directions, and the stick making contact with the ball. The brain says: Right, swing the stick down, and just hit that ball. Right arm: OK, played hockey, this can’t be that hard. Swing! Brain: Hmm, odd, nowhere near the ball. Arm, try again, etc Anyhow, you get the idea. 

Try as I might stick and ball did not want to be friends. This was all the more obvious as balls sailed out across the arena from our line of static crates, while mine stayed in a forlorn huddle about six feet in front of us.

Neddy and me

Next it was time to get on the horses. The group was of very mixed ability, and included a lady who had never ridden before. She was taken off for some private tuition while the rest of us tried to work out where the buttons were on the polo ponies. Robert issued instructions: “Don’t pat the horse! It hasn’t done anything exceptional! Remember, the relationship here is master and slave, none of this partnership nonsense!” (And polo players wonder why the general horsie public doesn’t embrace them?).

Once we’d worked out how to point and shoot the ponies, we were allowed to pick up our sticks. Half an hour of stop start ensued during which we all discovered how much more difficult it was to hit the thing when on a moving, living, often opinionated animal rather than a crate. This was probably my favourite part of the day and Neddy and I cantered around gamely (nearly came out the front door every time Neddy did one of his special sliding stops. Do any polo ponies have shoulders?) while the ball stayed mostly rooted to its spot despite my best efforts.

During the instructional chukkas that followed, just as he predicted, Robert’s good advice (“think of the road”) was totally lost on us as the group of inept beginners chopped at and barged around the ball. Sadly I was given a new and much less enthusiastic Neddy for this part and we didn’t see eye to eye on how fast one should approach the ball. Looking back, I think New Neddy was simply trying to maximise my chance of hitting the ball. How embarrassing, condescended by a horse.  

Polo seems to bring out exaggerated traits in people: The boys become overly brash, cantering fast, cutting each other up and going for the big shots (arena surface flying, ball usually staying put) and the girls trot slowly to the ball and fumble about trying to gently tap it away until the ponies grind to a halt over the ball and a fowl is called. 

Get stick in

Our chukkas were great fun, and by the time the final whistle blew we were all exhausted and no longer cold. I wouldn't say that polo was demystified in the space of three hours, but the course certainly offers a good flavour of just how hard the game really is. It requires a mind boggling level of hand eye coordination, and the five minutes that we played made for sore legs, arms and shoulders.

For all my griping and lack of natural skill, I would definitely like to have another go though. Or perhaps I should say I'm hooked. Oh no, that's just the stick. Wow, a polo joke, I definitely didn't think I'd come this far."

If you want to find out more about the Discover Polo course, all the details are on the Ascot Park website.