By Alastair Beaven
August 27 2007

A while back Glen asked if I would like to contribute an article to ERE during the slow closed season, any subject but vaguely rugby related. I'll have a go, I said, but don't hold your breath. I was originally going to write about the club versus country stuff you know all thud and blunder and aren't Bath great and aren't England rubbish.  

However, I was gutted when Ashton left , but my disappointment is with him, not the England team. Whatever happened, I am still an Englishman and will support them wherever, just like Bath. So, not much of an article there. I then got to thinking about sharing my use for Youtube, I find it relaxing of an evening just to put in a load of record titles and listen to them, much like a radio (but free) as I work on the 'puter. Having reviewed my latest selection, however, I'm not sure I want to share this as I come across as some kind of deep south redneck (no offense Phil) Rex Bob Lowenstein, The Decemberists, Stan Ridgeway, the list goes on, so I'll draw a veil over that.

Then a two week holiday in Spain intervened and during that time I rediscovered the 'sport' of bullfighting, that could be an interesting subject, I thought, but how do I link it with rugby, I shall explain, dear reader.

It started with a visit to Mijas, in the hills above Fuengirola and hidden away at the back of the village, is the smallest bullring in Spain, it also happens to be the only square bullring in Spain, the actual sandy bit is round, but there are seats only at two ends, giving the impression that it is oval shaped, like a rugby ball (rugby reference No. 1 – did you see what I did there?). I thought the whole place was quite cute, in an animal slaughter sort of way.

Later that day we were back at the apartment and , because there was complete rubbish on the UK TV channels, I ventured into the Spanish ones, being Sunday there was live bullfighting on, from a proper round ring with all the attendant theatre.

The human lot are a sort of tag team working in harmony, consisting of the cape wavers, the man on the horse, the man with coloured woolly spears and finally the swordsman himself. The action starts with the bull entering the ring, I don't know how many volts have been applied to his testes, but he is raging mad. He basically runs around a bit, charging at everything that moves. Apparently this gives the professionals time to weigh up the opposition, realistically they are trying to tire him out before the next stage. A man on a horse covered in protective padding (the horse not the man) entices the bull to charge at the horse (which has a blindfold on, um, not sure about that) and in the process of lowering his horns to gut the horse, the man sticks a bloody big spear between his shoulder blades. Now this has got to hurt and the bull is now really annoyed. The horse and rider leave for a quick Sam Miguel and change of underwear and the next act starts. This is where a man with woolly fluffy coloured razor sharp barbs entices the bull to charge at him. At the last minute he jumps out of the way and sticks the barbs between the poor sod's shoulders again, he must be really annoyed by now. This happens two or three times until the bull has got 6 or 8 of these things hanging out of him and is losing a serious amount of blood.

Now the main man enters, dressed in ridiculously coloured, tight fitting clothing covered in sequins and with his hair in a bun, obviously to offset the gayness of this he has to prove his manliness by confronting the bull eye to eye. However, the bull does not have the advantage of the man being stabbed and having 8 razor sharp barbs sticking out of his neck. The Matador then proceeds to crow and strut whilst the bull charges at his (pink, not red) cape. This is where the Matador shows his strength, bravery, courage and arrogance by teasing a mortally wounded animal and occasionally turning his back on him (with several thousand people ready to shout if the bull charges). In the final act he plants a sword squarely between the shoulder blades and the animal is brought to his knees. Ole.

Now, I watched all of this with fascination, except the part where the bull is brought to his knees, especially when one of the clumsy sods took 4 attempts to spear the damn thing. At this stage it seemed a little too one sided, a bit like England playing Romania at rugby (wahay No.2 reference). I'd like to see the guy in the ring with a bull that hadn't been used for darts practice. Ultimately the bull would have died anyway, I'm sure within hours the very same people watching were tucking into juicy bull steaks and within a few days walking around with a new pair of leather shoes, or a new handbag (and the same for the women). It's just, I like my sport mano y mano, or 15 against 15 (reference No. 3) where the only differentiation is the skill of the participants and not how much you can cripple your opponent before you show off.

Still with the garish, tight fitting outfits, arrogant preening and strutting, reliance on the rest of your team to do the hard work, tanned skin and slicked back hair, I suppose there could be a second career beckoning for Gavin Henson (No. 4, God I'm good). At least he's used to dealing with half a ton of pissed off cow.