Waterhall Polo Club Media Briefing

Sir Charles Williams hosted a special press briefing on Thursday at the Waterhall Polo Club house for the Williams Industries Waterhall Polo Match Series that started on Saturday, March 23 at Waterhall.

Sir Charles said that the tournament was a very significant one in the history of Barbados' polo and he could not let the opportunity pass to introduce the press to players of the caliber that will be playing in the tournament and to explain the significant impact that polo has been having on our sports tourism product.

Sir Charles has sponsored under the Apes Hill brand a professional polo team that plays in the Queens Cup and the Gold Cup in England. On this team is the English national polo captain Luke Tomlinson (7 goals), his brother Mark Tomlinson (7 goals), Ed Hitchman (3 goals) and Tom Morley (5 goals). The Apes Hill team is the first foreign team to reach the La Provincia final at Palermo in Argentina which is one of the most sought after and prestigious polo titles in the world.

The sponsorship of this team was a corporate strategy to sell the Apes Hill project. This has been successful as the team travels all over the world not only promoting Apes Hill but by extension Barbados. Sir Charles pointed to the fact that this strategy has led to a number of persons with very high net worth investing in Barbados. He made reference to Simon Holley who keeps a stable of horses on the island and has bought property here as an example.

This tournament is significant as there will be 9 professional players playing on the four teams. The teams are Ocho Rios from the UK, Custodian from Australia, Apes Hill and Williams Industries Waterhall.

Sir Charles also took the opportunity to thank his brother Ralph 'Bizzy' Williams for sponsoring the tournament which will have the highest handicap of all the tournaments held in the country this year, 16 goals. Williams said that he was pleased to be associated with the event and he looked forward to the high caliber of polo that will be on display. He said that all the fans should come out because this will be the best polo that they will see for the season, even better than the last match series that was
quite awesome.

Sir Charles also promised a special feature to the polo which is being billed as the 'Battle of the Brothers', machine versus horse, which has been done before at other polo events around the world and will be held in honour of his brother's love for cars. Leading sports reporter Andy Thornhill was given the honour of drawing to decide how the teams would play, and the first match of the evening will be Apes Hill versus Ocho Rios.