By Tania Phillips
Australia’s Polocrosse team has dominated their three-match series against New Zealand at Killarney at the weekend.
Held over three days, starting on Friday night, the test series was a good hit-out for the two National teams ahead of the world cup in South Africa later this year.
Australia dominated from the get go winning Friday night’s game 43-13, Saturday’s 34-14 and Sunday’s 40-15 in a dominant display of polocrosse.
The three matches were part of the 2024 Gold Racquet Carnival which attracted a large number of clubs and was hosted by the Gold Coast Polocrosse Club according to club president Chris Franklin.
Franklin said they have been holding the popular event at Killarney for the past 14 years.
“We lost our ground at Carrara on the coast and ever since then we’ve been trying to get grounds at the Gold Coast but it’s not possible, the land’s too dear,” he said.
“Plus, Killarney is such a great place to go.
“It works very well, we share the grounds with the Killarney Polocrosse Club there’s a bloke there by the name of Hayden Lamb who keeps the ground going all the time. It’s a very good venue, it’s easy to set up and it’s easy to take things down after the event. We drove out of there at 5.30pm and everything was cleaned up.
“We had a normal carnival but this time around we also had the test series between Australia and New Zealand.
“In July both teams are going over to South Africa to play for the world cup so it was a good hit out for them.
“It very well – Australia won but over the three test series New Zealand did come back and got better.”
He said both teams used borrowed horses for the tests.
“We got thirty-two pool horse that people donated and lent, each players had two horses to ride,” Franklin said.
The main competition the Gold Racquet Carnival was also a good warm up for the Australian titles in Chinchilla in five weeks
“We had a good carnival, we have 46 teams which is a very good result,” he said.
“Our most norther team was from Wandoan in Queensland and Inverell in the south.”
The Gold Coast, Tansy and Tara clubs dominated the domestic competition with Tara One taking out the prestigious Golden Racquet from Gold Coast one.
The A Grade was a tussle between the NSW teams with Inverell One taking it on a countback from Guyra. Local team Killarney One beat Tansey Two on a countback in B Grade with Gold Coast Three taking C Grade over Tara Two.
In the D Grade it was Gold Coast Five over Gold Coast Six while in E Grade Tansy Three beat the Cunningham second side. F Grade went to Tansey Four over Chinchilla Four. The Juniors went to Warwick over the Gold Coast.
