Event organiser Penny Sattler said the day was looking to be a highly successful one.

“We’ve got really good crowd numbers and a really exciting tournament and line-up for players so it’s going to be great,” Ms Sattler said.

“We’ve sold out of the main marquee already and there’s a handful of car boot tickets left and then general admission which will be available on the day as well.”

This year’s line-up of polo players includes numerous standouts, most notable of whom is AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan.

“It’s really great, he doesn’t come and play at this kind of thing very often anymore,” Ms Sattler said.

“His whole family is coming down as well so it’ll be really nice to have them all down here.”

Other key riders this Saturday include Australian men’s captain Ruki Baellieu, Australian women’s captain Alessia Russo and former New Zealand captain Sam Hopkinson. 

Ms Sattler said all players involved in the weekend were of a high standard. There are 40 horses from the mainland, mostly from Melbourne and Sydney. 

Twenty Tasmanian horses will also compete, contracted through Wickford Polo of Longford.

The teams will play each other over the latter half of the week, with the final being battled out in front of attendees on Saturday.

“That should be a really great, fast-paced match and that will decide the champions of Barnbougle Polo 2019.”​

Acknowledging the “devastating” deaths of 16 horses that died on their return to NSW last year, Ms Sattler said they did consider not bringing the event back. 

“We had so many people contact us and say they would be so disappointed if we didn’t hold it, we thought we should do it again, so we have,” she said.

“There is a lot of work that goes into the day, so something like that is just a negative that affect the efforts that everybody puts in and obviously it is such a devastating thing to have happened as well.”

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