Requirements: Arena & Equipment

For a competition to take place there needs to be a suitable arena set up to play in. In the Irish Pony Club most competitions take place in rural locations in Leinster, as majority of clubs such as Meath, Louth, Shillelagh, Laois and Kildare from Leinster. However there are a few clubs every year which have to travel long distances to compete such as Duhallow from Cork and Galway. To make it a bit fairer, some years qualifiers are played in Galway or Cork so that they don't always have to do the travelling.

There are four qualifiers before the RDS takes place in August. These are played in grass arenas, usually in Charleville, Monastereven and Galway. Most competitions are played on grass arenas. There are many reasons behind this. Obviously it cannot be run on hard concrete as this would be very dangerous if a rider fell. It would also damage the pony's feet, especially if they are not wearing shoes. Another alternative to grass could be sand. One of the reasons that sand is not used more often is because of it's size. Games arenas need to be certain widths and lengths and majority of sand arenas would not be suitable. There is a sand arena in Punchestown that is sometimes used for trials or MGA however the competitions cannot be held in the same place every time. It also costs more to rent a sand arena, compared to fields which are mostly owned by players' families anyway.
In the winter sand arenas would be more practical as grass can become muddy very quickly, unlike sand, and can also freeze. If the grass becomes too wet it can also be dangerous as the speed could lead to a pony falling and injuring themselves. Luckily in Ireland we have lots of space and rich grass to both train and compete on. As Ireland is a relatively small island too, the furthest people have to travel for competitions would be around 3 hours by car compared to places in America or across Europe where people could spend days travelling beforehand. This not only saves us money on fuel but means less green house gases are released into the atmosphere.

The final thing needed for a competition is equipment. Many games require the same equipment which can be very handy as they can be used again and again instead of having to buy different equipment for each race. It also saves the arena party who have to put out each piece of equipment between the races. 
Majority of the equipment is made from plastic or woods, with the exceptions of mugs and socks. Each piece is also painted or coloured too to make it easier to see for the rider during the game. Some ponies may shy away from equipment if they have never seen it before or are wary of it but after time will become used to it's appearance.

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