From 28 August to 4 September 2016 the XI FIP European Championship will be held in Berlin. Eight nations, including Poland, France, the Netherlands, Italy, der Slovakia, Austria, Ireland and host Germany, will fight tor the prestigious title.
Now the Federation of International Polo (FIP) has announced the zone draw done by FIP’s President Nicholas Colquhoun-Denvers and thus the first matches of the Championship. On Sunday, 28 August at 1 pm the first match will see host Germany facing Slovakia. This is followed by France encountering Poland. On Monday, 29 August the Championship continues at 3 pm with Ireland fighting against the Netherlands and at 4.30 pm Italy and Austria will compete against each other.
The preliminary matches will be held at the polo fields of the Polo- & Reitanlage Phöben at the gates of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The final weekend (3-4 September) takes place at the legendary Maifeld in front of the Olympiastadion Berlin. Simultaneously the Engel & Völkers Berlin Maifeld Polo Cup will be held from 26 August to 4 September 2016.
Mikey Henderson, from the National Irish Polo Team, spoke about his expectations and scooped some details on his team’s performance : “We are going to give this tournament 110% and aiming to walk away with the trophy, as I suppose all the other teams competing aim at. Our strategy is pretty simple, “go hard or go home”. We’re a four man team so we will look to stretch the teams we come up against and hopefully outscore them by the time the game’s up. I’ve played with the Hutchinson family for the past eight seasons, so that will work in favour. This will be a first for me playing with Creighton Boyd but I’ve played a lot against him: knowing each other’s games inside out, going into the tournament we are very comfortable as team.
Even though I’m not too familiar with a lot of the players in the other teams, everyone of these have been put together with the view of trying to win the tournament. Our toughest game will always be the next team we play against.
I myself have never been to Germany so Berlin will be completely new to me and I’m very much looking forward to it, it will be nice to have a look around and do some site seeing in our down time but will still be focused on the tournament at hand. All in all this will be a great experience for everyone involved and if we manage to go all the way there will surely a party to be had by all the Irish boys!”
Teams XI FIP European Championship:
Zone A
Germany (8)
Casper Crasemann (3)
Caesar Crasemann (2)
Heinrich Dumrath (3)
Niklas Steinle (0)
Ireland (8)
Creighton Boyd (0)
Stephen Hutchinson (1)
Max Hutchinson (3)
Michael Henderson (4)
Slovakia
TBA
Netherlands (7)
Jim Souren (1)
Niels van der Hoeven (2)
Alexander van Andel (2)
Maurice van Druten (2)
Zone B
France (8)
Julien Reynes (3)
Florent Garaud (3)
Louis Jarring (2)
Tancrède Viguie-Desplaces (0)
Italy (8)
Emanuele Boni (0)
Juan Pepa (3)
Paolo Grillini (2)
Marcelo Caivano (3)
Austria (8)
Walter Scherb (1)
Diego Braun (4)
Martin Bieler (2)
Robert Kofler (1)
Poland (8)
Milos Ruszkowski (2)
Maciej Oibrych (2)
Michal Czatoryski (1)
Jack Ukwenya (1)
Teams Engel & Völkers Berlin Maifeld Polo Cup
Team Engel & Völkers (12/11)
Christopher Winter (2)
Tim Ward (3)
Thomas Winter (4)
Christopher Kirsch / Oliver Winter (3 / 2)
Team Tom Tailor (11)
Uwe Schröder (0)
Daniel Crasemann (0)
Gastón Maíquez (7)
Cristobal Durrieu (4)
Team Allianz Kundler (11)
Paul Netzsch (0)
Juan Jose Storni (5)
Lucas Labat (6)
Andreas Bihrer (0)
Team Eltec (12)
Nico Wollenberg (1)
Moritz Gädeke (2)
Marcos Riglos (5)
Tatu Gomez Romero (4)
