The Devils Of Thornbrook

Chapter Twenty Seven

When after school rolled around I walked down to the polo field where the whole team was preparing for practice, it would be only a few more weeks of practices before we would have to send the horses back to the ranches where they belonged for Winter which in my case would be Wyoming.

Getting to the field I walked towards the stable to pull on my polo gear and make sure that Zeno was ready for practice.

"Nathan what's for practice today".

"Two laps around the pitch then form pairs, choose someone you don't normally go with we all have to be used to the other's style of play" I call as I walked into the stable and quickly changed into black boots, white pants, black shirt, and helmet before taking my horse out and brushing him so that he didn't have any hair on him.

I had to do this every time I came here, even if I knew he had been brushed he was my horse so I was more aware of where hair seemed to collect then the stable hand.

Once I was done, I saddled him up, and pulled myself up onto his back.

"Andiamo Zeno" I whisper to him and he moves out onto the field before I stopped in the middle to watch all of them race each other which was what I wanted.

Zeno was a race horse something which I had adopted from my dad who had once owned a world record holder which he won every game of Polo for Thornbrook on. He had even kept one of the fowls when Nero and one of the other horses in Wyoming had had fowls.

When the laps were over I instructed them to start passing between one another because I wanted them to practice precision. It wasn't that they were bad far from, but there is always room for improvement even with the best of the best.

I knew I was best at playing the game and learning that way so I often only got my practice that way but it was definitely something that worked every time.

"You all know the drill. Two teams" I say joining the side with more experienced players since I wanted the less experienced players to push themselves.

It always worked too.

The game then broke out and it was the usual organized chaos as they all created plans to work together and it was always good to see. I also noticed that when I took a more back footed approach my team would push harder and that was the goal. I knew I was good at the game so I was waiting for everyone to start pushing themselves and only then did I put myself in the game.

I had also noticed that all of my friends had come to watch practice though I had a suspicion that they would.

Taking the ball I effortlessly got past everyone keeping the ball in a controlled area before scoring and heading back down the pitch to my teams side of the field.

"Leave some work for the rest of us" August laughs I pass him and slow.

"It's called forcing them to compensate" I reply as I see the ball come flying down the pitch, and I hook it passing it to August.

"Show me what you can do them if you want" I challenge and he sets off with a determined look on his face.

When he scored once again I decided I'd try something, and waited for one of the other team's players to come along the side line before watching them score while I returned to watching how they were going about playing.

"We're going to push in three sections one will split down the sides another on our field, and another straight down the middle, we're going to play pass" I say to my players before turning and heading off down the side with one set of players and as expected they couldn't manage or intercept who had the ball before one of the mid line players scored and we all looped back.