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Hi I'm Dan, I'm the head of Historia Normannis. For this year we're throwing on some Roman
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kit and we're bringing Clash of Romans.
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It involves lots of Romans unsurprisingly and it does involve quite a lot of clashing.
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There's training and it involves quite a grueling schedule, I mean it can be up to sort of four
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or five hours. It's mostly combat orientated, but there's other bits as well like showmanship.
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Because it's no good hitting each other if it doesn't look like it really hurts.
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They're aiming to strike hard enough to leave a lovely bruise and have to react accordingly
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to show how powerful that was.
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The only way to get that is to go out into a field with sticks and get yourself bruised.
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Sort of the basis of the event is two groups of Auxiliaries training against each other.
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It's truly competitive it isn't we've scripted it and discussed it.
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We do a competition - first with javelins. So we throw javelins at each other team. Hits
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on shield hits on people count as points.
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It's great fun for us and the audience love it.
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It's very much competition sport - is the best way to explain it.
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It's a lot of fun and we thoroughly enjoy putting on the display for people.
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There's quite a lot of hitting each other, quite a lot of knocking people over. We use
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wooden Gladiai because we try not to kill each other too much.
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This allows us to be a bit more free in the combat because we can give each other a bit
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more of a whollop.
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Shield bashing and kicking is allowed - safety done of course.
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We allow bashing to the ground which makes the combat look very visceral.
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It's not just a sense of they're seeing a battle - they're really seeing guys really
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try and hit each other so you get a real sense of what a soldiers training would have looked
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like all that time ago.
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As a combatant it's a hell of a lot of fun.
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The buzz you get from the audience as well as being a spectator - everyone is on the
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edge of their seats just waiting for initial impact of one team smashing into the other.
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Once it happens it's just an uproar of cheers - it's amazing. It's one of those things you
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have to be there to be able to feel and experience what it's actually like.