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SCUTTLEBUTT

A scuttlebutt is "A drinking fountain on a ship" or "A cask on a ship used to hold the day's supply of drinking water". This section however has nothing to do with these definitions, but rather the one which implies that there is often intrigue and scandal surrounding the team (and other teams for that matter), and that it might appear on these very pages !

BUTTHEAD OF THE MONTH

And the winner for FEBRUARY 2004 is Studley who has been making all sorts of promises to women ...

Just in is the following email from 'Joey'. No effort at all has been made to change any names as no one is innocent in this story ...

Congratulations for the excellent website and mainly for the sport!! "Studley" is my friend (and also copied in this email) and I know he is very excited for the Sri Lanka tournament.. as he is for all the tournaments... I believe that you are a very lucky team having Studley in your team as I believe having Studley being my friend...

I wish you all Best of Luck and I hope I will be able one day to join you.. not to play polo... but to play with a baby elephant that Studley has once promised me..

.. now go get the cup and come back!!...

cheers
Joey

PROFESSOR TICKLE'S REBUTTAL:

Dear Joey

What a nice name. Did you know that baby kangaroos share your name ?

So Studley has been promising you rides on baby elephants has he ? Unfortunately Studley has trouble riding elephants (or any mammals for that matter) of any ages and has been caught promising elephant rides, rides in his Maserati and his private Boeing 737 before.

As a Professor of Psychiatry I see the phenomenon of alpha males attempting to use props on an all-too-frequent basis. It starts out with simple props like Brylcreem for that slick, 'The Fonz' look. Before I can get them back for another one of my bargain $500/hour sessions I find that they start buying props off the internet or simply mendaciously manufacturing them !

But I must stay, promising women rides on baby elephants is one of the lowest forms of reprehensible behaviour patterns I've ever encountered in all my year's of clinical experience. It fact it is so rare that I haven't seen such a desperate use of prop/date-aids since the Thailand 2003 tournament where Kelpie used this exact ruse. Kelpie however promised women rides only on elephants aged more than five-years old. The fact that Studley is going around promising rides on baby elephants is alarming in the extreme.

A similar ruse is sometimes seen and about this you need to be warned. Some male patients of mine have been know to walk up to an elephant and encourage it to wrap its trunk a number of times around them. Imagine an Anaconda entwined around a street lamp. The self-styled victim then waits for women to walk by before pretending to struggle and eventually escape the elephant's vice-grip using nothing other than brute strength and cunning. You will sometimes see Nice Guy trying to impress women this way. On more than one occasion he has failed to escape from the elephant which has had to be darted with a fast-acting tranquilizer. This doesn't seem to deter him, so consider yourself warned ...

Kind Regards

Professor Wilbert Tickle

STUDLEY RESPONDS

Dear Professor Tickle,

Where did you get your Phd from? I would have thought that you should still be living on the Galapagos islands climbing your way up the Darwinian evolutionary scale. Once you have reached the dizzying heights of the Galapagos tortoise (Giant tortoises tend to lead a peaceful, lazy life that centres on grazing, relaxing in the sun, or wallowing in water puddles - you, spot on), and a suitably mature age, you can contact Nice Guy, our other endemic over achiever and perhaps the only other species that cares about your ravings.....

BUTT NAKED

Well hopefully on their wedding night ...

We were delighted when in 2003, "Shifty" [Nepal 2001, Thailand 2002] announced his engagement to, and married, Joy. From an email of his in 2003:

"Joy and I became engaged over the weekend. We will try to schedule the festivities in order that they do not conflict with any of the Elephant Polo events"

Any player who arranges, their wedding to miss, and their honeymoon to coincide with, elephant polo tournaments deserves to be honoured. As such we are , for the first time, conferring "Life Member" status to a team member and congratulate Shifty, for reaching this exulted rank ahead of the rest of the pack !

Their wedding website is at www.joy-and-rick.com . Under their 'Favorite Links' section you'll find a link to this site. So we link to them. They link to us. Kind of neat the way this mutual admiration stuff works !