Going polo

Bryan Morrison - bringing the sport of kings into the 21st century

Not hooked yet? Bryan Morrison tells MARQ why polo is the new rock and roll

'Before I played polo I thought it was a game for stupid bastards,’ confesses Bryan Morrison. ‘But the first time I got close to the real thing I was hooked.’

Morrison is a legend in the music business. The quintessential backroom mover and shaker, he’s made several fortunes in both management and publishing with bands like the Bee Gees, Pink Floyd, George Michael and the Jam

In his autobiography Richard Strange describes him as ‘testosterone on legs’. This sounds about right.

‘I’d always been into fast cars and would have seen polo as too soft to bother with,’ says Morrison. ‘But actually polo’s as tough as it gets. In fact it’s damn near killed me on three occasions.’

Having kicked the proverbial out of the music industry through the sixties and seventies, Morrison’s now devoting his very considerable energies to dragging the sport of kings kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Over the past 30 years Morrison’s influence on the UK game has been immense. His mission has been to open up polo if not to the masses, then certainly to a very significantly wider audience. And his strategy has been to lead through example at his own club, the Royal County of Berkshire Polo Club.

One of Morrison’s strengths as an ambassador for the game is that he’s not just an effective and very vocal advocate, but also an extremely accomplished player. ‘I’ll probably get slaughtered for this but I think polo players are probably the best riders you’ll come across,’ he says, jabbing the air for emphasis with an ever-present cigar. ‘Take a look at top players in action. It’s genuinely acrobatic stuff. What other sport produces riders like that?’

Even with talent it can take seven years to become a decent polo professional.

Even his earliest playing years were auspicious; through a mixture of graft and ability he managed to take his handicap to three, one of only four true amateurs in this country to have achieved this, and within ten years had become a member of the Guards Polo Club.

In fact it was at the Guards, the last polo club to have opened in Britain before the Berkshire, that a determination to establish his own club developed. ‘Christ, the Guards was depressing,’ Morrison recalls. ‘Back then it had the least inspiring clubhouse you could imagine. Horrible 1950s drab, with a single, crummy ice-cold shower.’

These days polo is a tough but glamorous sport and après-polo can be fantastic – the quintessential play hard, party hard ethos. But 20 years ago Morrison found the traditional polo club ritual of cold showers and zero facilities at odds with the lifestyles of players and audience alike. Nevertheless his suggestion that the Guards’ clubhouse be re-designed with comfortable seating and showers and saunas for players was treated with something close to derision.

Frustrated by what he saw as an ingrained public school masochism that would confine the game to an elitist ghetto, Morrison responded by buying up a run-down racing stables in Berkshire to put his own theories into practice.

By 1986 – and within a year of the purchase – 270 unprepossessing acres were transformed into what would eventually become one of the UK’s top four polo clubs.

The first matches were played that season and, true to Morrison’s vision, comfort and style were at the top of the agenda. ‘During those first few months, after the chukkas we used to bring down these beautiful silver trays, cut-glass jugs with ice and orange juice for everybody,’ he recalls. ‘We made the gym really nice, with good soft towels and a steam room. Trouble was all the towels were stolen for the club logo and the silver disappeared as fast as you could replace it.’

Minor setbacks aside, Morrison knew he was on the right track. Wanting to exploit the implications of the mid-1980s boom, he knew modern facilities and shrewd marketing could take polo to a new and newly moneyed audience. ‘My instinct was to market the sport and club the same way I would a rock and roll band,’ Morrison explains. ‘But you’ll get nowhere trying to market inanimate objects, so for the first time in my life I was selling myself in order to get the club some column inches.’

Although no shrinking violet, Morrison is clearly uncomfortable with personal publicity, instinctively used to backing out of the limelight to make way for the artist. But like anyone who’s survived and prospered in the music industry, he’s also well aware of the value of his associations and of the right name dropped in the appropriate place. ‘We got tons of publicity right from the start. Partly because of my friendships with Prince Charles and Ronnie Ferguson. But also because the press could present me as a rock and roller, an East End boy treading on the traditions of the idle rich.’

In fact it would be difficult to find anyone more passionate about defending the real trad-itions of polo. A true scholar of the sport, Morrison clearly believes those traditions are best served by creating a compelling environment in which the spirit of the game can take on meaning for a new generation of enthusiasts.

‘When I was a kid my dad took me down to Hackney Marshes on a Sunday to watch the five-a-side football,’ Morrison remembers. ‘There’d be dozens of games played simultaneously – all that colour and excitement. It was like a Lowry painting. I thought it would be brilliant to try the same sort of thing at the club.’

The Berkshire’s Polo Festival is now a staple of the game’s social calendar. Instead of Hackney’s five-a-side teams, 34 polo teams from all over the country now compete annually at the end of each season. There can be few better examples of just how far Morrison has moved the game on than the festival’s multiple polo matches taking place simultaneously on all six of the Berkshire’s polo fields in front of capacity crowds.

Morrison is now one of the 14 stewards of the Hurlingham Polo Association, the sport’s governing body, and well placed to influence the growing democratisation of the game. ‘Today pretty much anyone with enough land for a polo field can apply to become a member of the HPA. But back in the 1980s when I applied to become a club member they didn’t want to know.’ In fact it took nine months of intensive lobbying by the late Ronald Ferguson before Morrison and the Berkshire were admitted to the Association’s esteemed ranks.

This tough, competitive sport is ripe for corporate sponsorship.

Over the past two decades, membership of the HPA has increased from a fairly static 400 or so to a healthy 3000 and is growing by ten to 15 per cent annually. To accommodate the growing popularity of the game, close to 50 new polo clubs have opened in the past ten years.
While polo’s celebrity fans like Orlando Bloom, Jack, Jemma and Jodie Kidd, Angelina Jolie, Roman Abramovich and Cate Blanchett hog the headlines at events like the Cartier International, regular matches and tournament days at the Berkshire are a far better measure of how much the game has been improved for the better.

‘I think the buzz at the Berkshire is partly due to the fact we’ve gone out of our way to make non-players feel at home,’ says Morrison. Certainly the club’s Social Membership initiative has proved a shrewd marketing move, encouraging families to feel part of the polo crowd with cocktail parties, barbeques and a Christmas ball.

Morrison’s latest mission is to encourage greater sponsorship of polo in the UK with a view to driving public exposure of the game. ‘A major company could own polo in this country for around £200,000 – that’s the Gold Cup, the Queen’s Cup, the Prince of Wales’ Trophy. Own them! Mark my words, within a couple of years all the big polo tournaments will be on TV.’

Given Morrison’s track record, it would be a brave man who’d bet against it.


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