Last weekend I went to the Blacktown Medieval Fayre. Mostly I went to see the jousting. Yes, you read right – LIVE, REAL, FULL CONTACT JOUSTING. I was just as excited as you. I’d watched a few episodes of the Knights of Mayhem, really enjoyed A Knight’s Tale,   have an obsession with writing about the combat and hardships from that period, and have developed a pretty severe disillusionment with modern western sport. I was looking for something new, and jousting could be it.

Here’s a little taste from my iPhone. Doesn’t really do it justice.

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Here’s a little taste from Knight’s of Mayhem. Much better!

First and foremost, let’s deal with my disillusion with modern sport. I grew up at the back end of the 90′s glory days in rugby league and cricket, when rough as guts players rose above the rest of us and were gods for 80 minutes, or 5 days, or however long their game went for. These people weren’t rich, but they were fiercely loyal. You followed people. You cheered for them through thick and thin. Then you thanked them with tears in your eyes when their knees, or their shoulders, or their spirit gave out and they called it a day.

Then some genius marketer realised just how much financial potential was in Aussie contact sport. With money and endorsements came big contract offerings to move clubs. Moving clubs stopped being sacrilege and became the norm. All of a sudden you were supporting a jersey and not a person amongst a group of people it didn’t matter if you loved or hated, they were your club. So you either followed a club of faceless players or you club-hopped with your favourite player as he spent two years here, a couple of years there, a season in the UK, and then made a comeback with a struggling club back here.

The team sport feels like it’s dying. Those like me, who are struggling to accept the changes, either only watch international or rep games or only bother to catch their club games at home a couple of times a season.

This has me looking elsewhere for sports where I can get behind people. I want to support people who aren’t going to jump ship. Perhaps I want a sport of individuals – something that really goes against my grain. I thought first of boxing. Well, let’s be honest here about boxing: the sport is so ridiculously corrupt and rigged that you may as well watch the WWE. Tennis is up there, but I find it boring. Snowboarding doesn’t have enough mongrel. MMA is good fun, plenty of mongrel, but I want something a bit more regal.

Then I came upon jousting. It’s old, centuries old. It’s brutal. It’s equal – men fight women. Nobody seems to care about sexual choices either. As long as you can hit like a brick wall none of that shit matters. It takes some serious fucking guts. Despite all the armour, those huge warhorses really hit their stride right before the impact. Those lances shatter and splinter like you wouldn’t believe. It takes immense skill. And I enjoyed seeing a little old-fashioned honour there too.

So, what if this sport got some decent funding? What if more than just enthusiasts – more hard as nails athletes like the Knights of Mayhem and Full Tilt Jousting – had the courage to get up on a horse, square the shoulder, and take the hit? Think about a bloke the size of the NRL’s Dave Taylor on a horse in full armour (George RR Martin’s The Mountain, anyone?). What if you had thousands of screaming fans at shows instead of a small cadre being amped up by a presenter and alongside a few families who aren’t really that interested?

Let’s talk about what could be done.

Build up the show: I think the Blacktown Medieval Fayre (BMF) has a ways to come before it really hits its stride. I don’t know about the US or UK shows, but ours needs improvement. When it does, jousting will take off. The problem with a medieval fayre, in this case, was that it was more a fair about medieval things, as opposed to a medieval fayre.

What do I mean by that? If you’ve been to the Sydney health expo, you’ll see a bunch of stalls pegged out full of different things – the next big superfood, treadmills, fat-loss pills, etc. The stalls look the same, but the interior is different. The same was for the BMF. It seemed more educational and less “lose yourself in a real medieval tournament”. The recreation and combat groups did their best to show the tools and styles of old, but most of what they showed was lost on the crowd who seemed to get bored quickly in most cases.

What’s needed are actors, stunt people, set designers, and technology. Perhaps full contact melee fighting with blunted blades – we’re happy to beat the crap out of each other in MMA, Muay Thai, and boxing, why not blunted sword, axe and mace fully-armoured melee? How good would it be if they could build something like Old Sydney Town used to be? There were shows, reenactments that were enjoyable, witty actors walking the streets involving the crowd,  time-relevant buildings, and more. It was like the whole town told a story. You were sucked into a book, only one you could see, smell, hear, and touch. Imagine if you went to a real jousting tournament surrounded by that?

Build up the people: The knights are people. The horses are real. The squires, handlers, blacksmiths, cooks, loom-workers, bar people are all real. They have stories, fallacies, virtues, courage and fears. Knights of Mayhem did a good job of showing this – but what it also showed, and what I saw at BMF was that the crowd can really lack the enthusiasm and numbers required to attract what can bring money into the sport on a major level that would encourage a real international sport – TV and advertising. Knights of Mayhem was part action, part reality show. Imagine if jousting was was put out there like a boxing match, or bull riding session. Imagine if you had Budweiser or VB in on it with ads showing a team of squires, handlers, and a smith cheersing their victorious knight after a hard-won day.

The risk is the same as any other sport. Greed comes hand-in-hand with money. Crime follows greed. Just look at boxing. All we can do is learn from our mistakes and hope they won’t do the same.

I reckon it’d get a similar following to bull riding. I reckon you could get behind a man or woman, cheer their name, and be proud to follow them once more. I reckon being a knight would be something again – perhaps not a warrior in battle or leader in war, but people worth putting your sport-faith in.

To start following some jousting companies, check out Knights of Mayhem Facebook page or the Full Tilt Jousting webpage.