326 SPORTING STORIES 



horseback " rapidly spread. The Blues and the Life 

 Guards were the next to take it up. Then Captain F. 

 Herbert, on quitting the 9th Lancers, started the first 

 County Club in Monmouthshire. Other shires followed 

 suit, and the game became popular with civilians, and 

 especially with hunting men. 



I made my first acquaintance with polo in 1874. I was 

 then editing a journal of sport, in which some disparaging 

 remarks on the game had appeared, and I was courteously 

 invited by the Secretary of the Polo Club to come down 

 to Hurlingham and judge for myself whether the game 

 deserved the criticism which one of my contributors had 

 passed upon it. I accepted the invitation, and was quite 

 satisfied that polo was a fine, manly game, offering grand 

 opportunities for the display of skill in horsemanship. But, 

 compared with what it has since become, the polo of five- 

 and-twenty years ago was a very slow game. The dribbling 

 of that day has given place to clean, hard hitting and clever 

 passing ; there is fierce and exciting galloping where there 

 was little more than cantering. The ponies are bigger, the 

 players have ten times the dash and skill, and the reduction 

 in the number of players from eight to four gives far more 

 scope for quickness and scientific combination. Polo, as it 

 is now played, is a splendid game to watch — far more 

 stirring than football or hockey ; and, for my part, next to 

 a cricket match, I would rather see a polo match than any- 

 thing else of the kind. Perhaps if I were not a cricket 

 enthusiast I should place polo first of all games. 



In those remote days of the seventies the Duke of 

 Connaught was a polo-player. A pair of conspicuous 

 players, too, were the Murriettas, who were always mounted 

 to perfection. " Chicken " Hartopp was, despite his great 

 weight and size, an excellent poloist, and threw himself 

 into it with characteristic energy whilst the fit lasted. But 

 the " Chicken " was too many-sided a man to concentrate 

 his mind on one pastime for any length of time. 



Another noted poloist of that day was the late Horace 

 Rochford of Colgrennan, County Carlow, who, though he 

 was 60 when he took up the game, proved himself as good 

 on the polo-ground as he was in the hunting-field. He was 



