That's not goat polo! It's goat rugby!

That polo analogy just wasn't working for me.

I'm on board with the fact that they have horses in Afghanistan.

But they're playing polo with a headless goat carcass?

How would that work?

You'd need one hell of a mallet to move that carcass more than a couple of feet.

Or move it at all.

So I did a little more research, and it turns out they don't even use mallets.

No, they lean down from their horses much like what you'd see at a North American rodeo competition, and scoop up that headless goat carcass, and make a bee-line for the end-zone.

That ain't polo!

That's rugby!

What the hell is "goat polo?"

I'd read several accounts of a suicide attack in Afghanistan the other day. It happened at a "sporting match."

I was eventually able to determine the nature of that sporting match; goat polo.

Goat polo? OK, I get it. I know what polo is; similar to field hockey except you play it while mounted on a horse. I naturally assumed that, given the backwardness of Afghanistan, they played the game whilst mounted on goats.

Boy was I ever wrong!

Apparently they have the horses. According to Al Jazeera it's called goat polo because it's played with the headless carcass of a goat instead of a ball.

Who knew?