"I'm looking forward to getting right in amongst it and intimate in the best kind of way, canny foxes!"
We all know how the usual pre-match interviews go in sport. Whereas a post-match chat can feature some real insight and brilliant sound-bites as players and managers react to the previous hour and half, the pre-match chat can often be quite a formality.
Bit of talk about team news, the usual stuff of "we're going to treat them with a huge amount of respect/it's going to be a difficult game/they're a very good side etc." You know the drill.
But on Friday a certain Bristol Bears prop decided to go against every single one of these usual tropes in his preview of the game.
Max Lahiff, who unsurprisingly is a bit of a cult hero at the club, delivered an interview that was fantastic and bizarre in equal measure. In an interview that almost seemed like a parody, Lahiff went full David Brent/Alan Partridge when discussing the upcoming clash with Wasps.
Starting off by describing Wasps as a "team of real mavericks", the prop forward goes onto describe his performance in his last match as follows:
"I was running around, talking to my ancestors, I was missing lungs. Man, I was battling.com. You know, one of those real personal grind-outs."
It doesn't end there either. When he's asked about what he enjoys about playing on Friday nights, Lahiff describes the atmosphere as one where the fans are "wanting that release, a stimulation just to watch a macabre sport of gladiatorial confrontation."
Finally he rounds off the interview by getting rather intense about the prospect of "getting intimate" with the Wasps players, before saying, "I don't know what just happened. I blacked out, I blacked out!"
https://twitter.com/BristolBears/status/1370455804373954561
The interview has gone down a treat on Twitter. One user commented: "As an American who loves football, baseball, and basketball, I don’t know much about rugby. But one thing I know - after this interview I want to see these guys play!"
Others called for him to be interviewed every week, and noted how refreshing it was to see some personality in an interview.
Whatever your opinion on rugby you can't argue that the game certainly has some interesting arguments. Here's to more interviews like this please.
