Dateline, Medieval Fight Club: The Australians fighting back in time
Transcript
I first meet Paul Smith at a sleepy RSL in Country Queensland. Here he toils in the kitchen in the rarely glamorous role of head cook.
PAUL SMITH, AUSTRALIAN TEAM CAPTAIN: It's not like it is on telly, that's for sure. How can you hype up cutting up a tomato?
It's not until the weekends that Paul's skills with a blade really draw a crowd.
MEDIEVAL SPRUIKER: My lords! Do you swear before Almighty God and St George that you will act in a chivalric manner?
SWORDSMAN: I do.
Today Paul and his fellow swordsmen are putting on demonstration fights to amuse the locals. Paul's group started out doing light-hearted re-enactments, the kind of thing you may have seen at renaissance fairs. But that's grown into competitive, full-contact armoured fighting like this.
MEDIEVAL SPRUIKER: Well struck.
In fact, Paul is about to captain an Australian team at the international pinnacle of medieval fighting - a tournament in Croatia called The Battle of the Nations.
PAUL SMITH: The Battle of the Nations is in my view, probably the closest thing we are ever going to get to actual medieval combat. 33 countries go. We fought the Americans. That was our last fight last year. That was pretty good. We got pretty well trounced, but it was good to come up against them and have a bash, you know. It was pretty brutal and intense.
REPORTER: Would you like to take them down this year?
PAUL SMITH: If we were capable of doing it for sure, yeah, for sure.
I was impressed by Paul's quiet determination to take on the USA, but I have to admit that seeing
them fight at the Goomeri Pumpkin Festival no less, it was hard to imagine medieval combat as an actual international sport.
REPORTER: Do you feel it's silly to be doing that?
PAUL SMITH: Not at all. What's the point of working and doing all these laborious tasks that you do
without having some enjoyment in your life?
Down in Sydney I meet another one of the team - Tim Reeves. For Tim, it's the sport's historical side that is a big part of its appeal.
TIM REEVES, AUSTRALIAN TEAM MEMBER: The family heritage is Scottish. I've done a fair bit of research and found links to 14th century tournaments in my own heritage. So I've tried to use that side of the family to actually put the kit together.
To Tim's surprise, he's also found it's his helmet that gives him the strongest sense of how his knightly ancestors must have felt.
TIM REEVES: I still feel like myself until I put the visor down.
REPORTER: Now how do you feel?
TIM REEVES: Now I feel prepared to go to war, really. It's just a different state of mind. What I can hear is different. Can I hear my breathing, it really does make you feel invincible, I suppose.
BRYCE LIGHTBODY: So I am working on a new Mongolian Brigadine for Skye. Brigadine is a style of armour which is made up of a lot of small overlapping plates.
Preparing for this sport isn't easy. Either you order a suit for thousands of dollars from overseas armourers, or you can painstakingly make it yourself. But Bryce Lightbody is not making this suit for him. It's for his girlfriend, Skye Burnie, who loves Mongolian armour.
SKYE BURNIE: I am a bit geeky, and nerdy, I guess. I was in the library every chance I got just reading books, writing stories, poetry and all that kind of stuff.
REPORTER: Those kids are normally assumed to be a bit powerless.
SKYE BURNIE: Yes. I guess, yeah.
REPORTER: Is there part of this that is about going - you know what, stuff you, I get to do this.
SKYE BURNIE: I'm going to turn this around and shove it all in your face, show you that I wasn't what you thought I was.
In is the first year that women will be fighting in The Battle of the Nations Tournament. Skye will be competing in a one on one dual.
SKYE BURNIE: It's being proud to be over there and actually fighting for your country as well as getting a footnote in history saying that you're one of the first women to compete in a mainly men's sport.
BOY: You're a woman! It's impossible for a woman to fight.
SKYE BURNIE: Try and stop me. Once you like get that signal where you have to start fighting, you just forget about everything. You just start wailing all the people.
With the tournament looming, the squad's training gets more intense. They take this every bit as seriously as the footballers training nearby.
MAN: Maybe we should go tackle them.
Apparently it's no joke trying to run and manoeuvre wearing up to 30 kilos of armour.
PAUL SMITH: I don't walk out onto the field and feel like I'm a knight that needs to be chivalrous. It's not re-enactment to that level - it's a sport that I want to compete in.
REPORTER: You just want to beat someone to the ground?
PAUL SMITH: Yeah, yeah.
This is Trogir. It's a stunningly beautiful island off the coast of Croatia that's home to a tiny 12th century walled village.
PAUL SMITH: The location is perfect. It's awesome.
And it's where, after months of preparation The Battle of the Nations is about to begin.
MAN: USA, USA, USA!
The tournament site itself is a cross between an Olympic Village and a pop-up medieval town.
ANNOUNCER: Australia!
The opening ceremony mixes feudal pageantry with modern patriotism and like all opening ceremonies; it goes on way too long. With the formalities out of the way, the Australians prepare for their opening match against Finland.
TIM REEVES: Getting ready for the first fight, looking forward to it. Awesome. Just trying to keep the heart rate down, stay calm and just save it all for out there.
ANNOUNCER: Competitors... Start battle!
The rules of the game are pretty simple. Once a fighter has three points of contact with the ground, he's out of the battle. And so the last team with men standing is the winner. Points are awarded for how many knights survive in each round. For the first two rounds Finland is dominating.
ANNOUNCER: Stop fight.
Up close the sheer violence of the maces, swords and axes smashing into armour is pretty shocking.
PAUL SMITH: The thrill of being hit repeatedly in the head with a sword and surviving it is certainly a rush.
The Australians push back hard and after four brutal rounds the match is over and Paul's men are victorious.
TIM REEVES: Good effort. It was awesome. So good.
ANNOUNCER: Two points to Australia.
Unfortunately, though, Paul, the captain, has been injured.
PAUL SMITH: Well I fell down I was injured. I pulled that long muscle down my back.
As Paul tries to recover, Skye's competition is about to start. But the long sword she's been waiting months for and is supposed to be fighting with never arrived.
REPORTER: You're fighting with a sword you've never swung?
SKYE BURNIE: Yes, I've swung those plastic ones. So let's hoping it goes well. I don't know really. I haven't used a proper long sword yet. I'm going to die.
GIRL: You're going to be fine.
SKYE BURNIE: Yeah.
GIRL: You're going to be fine.
Skye's drawn the hardest pool in the competition. She's facing fighters from all three of the strongest countries - Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The Eastern Europeans dominate this sport and these are Skye's first battles against anyone outside of Australia. These one on one duals are judged like fencing. Skye fights valiantly, even pushing the Ukrainian to a rare fourth deciding round. She ultimately loses but never gets knocked down. Everyone, including her opponents, are impressed by the fight she's shown.
SKYE BURNIE: I surprised the crowd. Everyone is like - who's this Australian person, we don't know anything about them. I went in and walloped her. They're all like, whoa, and so it was very good.
Watching it all unfold, I start to feel both humbled and delighted that so many people have taken the effort to bring their dreams of being a knight to life. For the Australian men, the rest of the afternoon is a struggle. Despite his back, Paul rallies to lead the team into three more battles. The Australians win against Luxembourg, but then lose to Argentina. A blow to the knee takes one of Paul's team out of the tournament.
ANNOUNCER: Medic is needed!
At this point I have to admit I'm getting pretty into this as a sport and I desperately want the Australians to rally. They regroup to take on the Czech Republic, but it proves to be a slow, grinding fight that ends in another loss.
REPORTER: Are you done for the tournament?
STEPHEN “FUZZ” RAMSAY, AUSTRALIAN TEAM MEMBER: No, we're through to the next round which is good, give us a day to recover from any of the injuries we picked up. I don't think there was one of us that didn't do as much as they could out there.
REPORTER: Are you proud?
STEPHEN “FUZZ” RAMSAY: Yeah.
Their final day turns wet and muddy. It's beginning to truly feel like a medieval campaign. It turns out the team now has an elimination match against their old foe - the USA.
PAUL SMITH: I want to win this one, yeah. Yeah, we will get them.
ALL: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Oi, oi, oi!
This is it. The losing side will be out of the competition. And the fighting is fierce, despite all the weariness.
PAUL SMITH: I would say that it's more of a personal challenge - can I withstand this? You know what I mean? Is my body up to the task. Am I going to get too scared or, I want to see what I'm capable of.
By the final round, though, Paul is still standing. Delivering the blows that fell the final American and give Australia victory and give Australia victory.
PAUL SMITH: I did me proud. They did themselves proud.
REPORTER: Did you have a good fight?
PAUL SMITH: Yes, vengeance for last year. That was good, that was good, really happy.
Unfortunately Australia was knocked out by Italy soon after and Russia won the finals, as it apparently always does. At the end of the tournament, the Australians had placed 15th. The best result yet for the team. I couldn't help but be proud of them. I'm not sure that as a sport this will ever make it big, but at the same time I'm kind of glad to know there are Australian knights at large in the world.
PAUL SMITH: It's a very special experience. It's very emotional, it's a real brotherhood there, I guess. It's really cool.
Reporter
AARON THOMAS
Camera
AARON LEWIS
Additional Camera
BRENDAN EASTON
Associate Producer
ELANA STAROSELSKY
Story Editor
AARON THOMAS
21st April 2015