The Canberra Burly Griffins medieval combat club practises most Saturdays at the Narrabundah Ballpark. Photo: Bryce Lightbody.
If your Saturday morning walk around the Narrabundah Ballpark has ever been interrupted by the clash of steel and the sight of medieval knights locked in mortal combat on the grass, your eyes aren’t deceiving you.
It’s the ‘Canberra Burly Griffins’, our very own knights in shining armour.
It’s a relatively new club, founded in mid-2023 by Bryce Lightbody, who arguably brought the whole ‘medieval armoured combat’ sport thing to Australia about 10 years ago. But it’s enjoyed strong growth since then, to the point it now numbers 25 members.
They train three times a week at the Canberra Martial Arts & Fitness Centre at the Coombs Shops, using foam swords, rubber shields, and basketball-looking helmets. In addition, they have fully armoured Saturday morning sessions out in the wild.
“It’s a very interesting kind of dichotomy between your nerd, your history buff, and your athlete, so it’s an interesting one to gather new members for,” Bryce says.
“The sport came about from looking at some of the ways the 14th and 15th-century European tournaments would take place, when there were very specific regulations because they want their knights and men-at-arms to compete, but not kill each other.
“So the primary difference between our sport and the way a medieval actual battle would happen is we don’t have stabbing. Pretty much any other blows count. So you can strike the head, legs and body, and you can punch, kick, and throw guys to the ground.”
Fully suited up. Photo: Bryce Lightbody.
A team is triumphant if it manages to put the other team members on the ground.
“Once a third point of contact touches the ground, that person stays down.”
Bryce came across it for the first time about 10 years ago when he decided to take his jujitsu lessons up a notch.
“I was on my Christmas break, with not much work to do, and saw a bunch of YouTube videos of these Russians beating the snot out of each other,” he says.
“I’d been doing a bunch of jujitsu lessons and Viking re-enactments at the time. I saw this and thought it actually looked like a very hard, competitive martial art.”
He became one of the first people to bring it to Australia, helping put together a national team in Sydney before moving to Canberra in 2023.
“Last year, Australia sent two teams to the world championships in France, and we placed eighth out of 50-odd teams from 38 countries. We’re chasing a spot in the top five this year.”
The club members train up to three times a week at the Canberra Martial Arts & Fitness Centre. Photo: Bryce Lightbody.
Bryce pulled together the ‘Canberra Burly Griffins’ first by trawling social media and “shooting messages” to locals who happened to comment on medieval fighting videos on the likes of YouTube and Facebook.
The club also attended the inaugural Queanbeyan Medieval Fair in September last year and enjoyed “massive interest”.
“That was a good recruiting opportunity.”
In terms of cost, he describes it as a mid-range sport, in between rugby and car and motorbike racing. A full suit of custom steel armour, plus the equipment, costs between $2000 and $4000, but “once you’ve got that, it’s just about maintenance”.
“Luckily, I’m pretty good at metalworking so I’ve made the majority of my armour, but it has to be very high quality, otherwise you do risk injury,” he says.
A full suit of custom armour costs between $2000 and $4000. Photo: Bryce Lightbody.
Ukraine remains the largest supplier of armour as a country with a “massive following of the sport”, even if that has been affected in recent years.
“It has to be made quite close to your body – so I can sprint and do barrel rolls and cartwheels in my armour – because if you can’t move well in your armour, you’re going to be fighting it as well as fighting your opponent.”
The full suit weighs an average of 25 to 30 kg, but once it is spread across the body, “you get used to it.”
Just testing. Photo: Bryce Lightbody.
Needless to say, it does attract attention.
“We’ve had the police coming to check in on us after they’ve received reports of crazy people swinging axes and swords around in the park, but they’re always interested when they show, and really, it’s actually really cool,” Bryce says.
“And just the other week, we had a guy who had just been driving past and going to football there, and he was super interested. I mean, swinging swords around is much cooler than football!”
Visit Canberra Burly Griffins on Facebook for more information (you know you want to).
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