Polo: Chukkas and chuckles

John-Paul Clarkin and some of his "team-mates" at Clevedon. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Polo has provided John-Paul Clarkin with some pretty amazing life experiences.

The 26-year-old New Zealand representative spends 10 months of the year living in England where he competes professionally for the prestigious Cirencester club.

He has formed friendships with Prince Charles and his sons, William and Harry, and has competed in the game at the highest level - on an elephant, that is.

Regarded as New Zealand's leading professional player, Clarkin can't help but chuckle when recalling the day he took part in the elephant polo world championships in Nepal 14 months ago.

"It was the same as polo except that you had a guy driving the elephant for you," Clarkin said.

"The communication wasn't that crash hot because the chap driving didn't speak English, so it was more of a sign language job."

Taking into consideration the size of your average elephant the game was played at a considerably slower pace than Clarkin was accustomed too.

"It was quite frustrating but for comedy value it was very good. The elephants were very well behaved."

With the elephant experience now well behind him Clarkin's immediate focus is on tomorrow's transtasman match against Australia at the Kihikihi Polo Grounds.

At stake is the Australasian Gold Cup. The match is generally the only regular home international fixture on the New Zealand calender.

The four-man New Zealand team plus reserve will turn up with an entourage of seven or eight horses each to face the Aussies.

"It will be tough, they are all really good players who have a lot of international exposure," said Clarkin. "A bonus for us is that we are riding our own horses whereas the Australians turn up and have to ride borrowed horses, which could be an advantage for us."

Like any sport there are risks. Clarkin's father Paul, a prominent New Zealand figure in polo, who played and coached for more than 30 years in Britain, Ireland, Australia, Oman, Dubai, Singapore, Malaysia and India, died last July after he was knocked off his horse during a match in Cirencester.

Clarkin said the loss of his father has left a huge gap in his life but quitting the sport was not an option.

"I know that is the last thing that he would have wanted. He was an awesome, awesome horseman so I just want to carry on like he would have liked."

Polo is dictated by a system where players are graded depending on their allround ability - a minus-2-goaler being the lowest and a 10-goaler the highest.

Clarkin has a 7-goal grading.

Less than a dozen players in the world are graded 10. Stuart Mackenzie was New Zealand's highest goal player, reaching nine for a season in 1988

"Every player's dream is to get to 10-goal, which a very limited number of players do. To get to that level you have to play a lot overseas.

"It is not a huge, huge jump [from 7 to 10] but it is a very difficult one."

While the game is competitive in Britain, Argentina is regarded as the home of polo.

"It has taken me a long time but now I am in quite a good situation and I have a good number of horses in England. I'll just see where it goes from there.

"To become the best I think you have to spend a certain amount of time in Argentina and learn the way that they do things."

A move to Argentina would bring an end to his battles with the Princes who often play in charity and club matches. "I know them quite well, they are just normal, well not really normal, but they'd like to be."