Mahra wins Royal Jet Cup – Dubai Polo Update

The foursome of Mahra needed sudden-death overtime to defeat Dubai Falcons in finals of the Royal Jet Cup being held at the field of Dubai Polo and Equestrian Club.

Nacho Gonzalez played pivotal role and scored the go-ahead goal in the extra-time to lift his team to a 9-8 victory in the crucial competition. The much-awaited final contest of the event was keenly-fought and produced tremendous competition for spectators
in the crowd-packed arena.

Rashid Al Habtoor was captain of the winning Mahra while Bin Drai led Dubai Falcons in the nail-biting finals.

The opening set of play was filled with lot of attacks and counterattacks, but both teams could only score three goals in the seven and half minute of play. Gonzalez contested the game in quite an aggressive way, scored a pair of goals to open the game,
and put Mahra ahead on the scoreboard.  Salvador Ulloa marked the only goal of the first frame and brought his team into the score net. After the first chukka of action, Mahra held a narrow one-point lead, 2-1 in the game.

The attackers of Dubai Falcons came alive in the second frame and had it all even at the end of the round. Ulloa scored a couple of goals of which one came on a penalty shot while other from the field and put his team ahead in the goal-scoring race. But
another Mahra goal went up on the scoreboard from Gonzales and levelled the results. The duo teams took a 3-3 score with them to the sidelines before going into the second half of play.

Both squads exchanged a couple of goals in the third set of play and went into the last frame with holding a 5-5 tie-up with them. Mario Gomez converted a pair of spot shots for Mahra and established its dominance in the game. But the players of Dubai Falcons
were not sitting inactively and watching the time pass by. Bin Drai came into score-net by scoring twice; getting a goal from the field and converting another penalty shot.

The last set of play was quite a hard hitting, as duo sides put all their efforts to take the contest under their control. The players from both sides adopted most offensive approaches in the game. Many of hits and attacks went wide and brushed aside in
the frame, which really enthralled the audience.

Nicho Petrachi and Bin Drai scored two and one goal respectively and took a commanding three-point lead in the game. The foursome of Mahra accelerated the speed of their attacks and with a couple of goals from Gomez succeeded to mark a cut in the lead. With
30 second left to play, Gonzalez tied the knots through a penalty conversion and made the game more interesting.

The duo teams went into the sudden-death overtime with an eight-all score to the sidelines to make the match decisive. The duo sides continued a fast-paced game in the overtime and carried out numerous strikes. Fabled star of Argentina, Gonzales managed
to take the ball away and hit a long drive which sailed perfectly in the Dubai Falcons’ posts and sealed the win of Mahra. With the final action, Mahra won the title of the Royal Jet Club.

Nacho Gonzalez earned the Player of the Tournament award while Bin Drai was the top scorer of the tournament.