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A school gym in England, mid-'90s, and two local rugby players await orders. One is small and wide and called Adrian, and one is tall and weighs about 20 stone. He's Big Dave. Adrian has been getting flattened by Big Dave all day but he keeps getting back up. It's the rugby training in him: you bloody well get back up if you're knocked down. But this instinct is starting to annoy the people he's in the school gym for, the people making the sports game. They're trying to motion-capture for a rugby game and would rather Adrian lay still. They should be careful what they wish for.Adrian and Big Dave can't replicate high tackles because they're dangerous: plough into someone above the shoulders and you could kill them - how 6'4" Big Dave has managed not to do this to 5'8" Adrian already I don't know. But the game makers want high tackle motion capture. What to do? They have a lightbulb moment, a Blue Peter moment, and shoot off to the local Millets camping shop in Slough, home of grey British comedy The Office, to buy camping mats and rope for a homemade harness. A harness for Adrian. A harness with a rope Big Dave will pull to simulate a high tackle. They give it a shot.
Big Dave is Adrian's friend so he takes it easy on Adrian the first time round and barely yanks him off his feet. This annoys the man in charge of the company making the sports game. "No no no!" he blurts in a blunt and cockney manner. "Come on, give it some stick will you!" He makes Adrian run faster and Big Dave pull harder. And this time Adrian looks like he's been hit by a bus: he flies back off his feet and lands flat on his back - and doesn't get straight back up. He just lies there.
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