Full blown combat or display only?

[Salvianus]

I was one of the barbarians having a go at the Romans at York John spoke of. We were all contact steel re-enactors, mostly Regia etc, and armed as such and they, the XX and XIIII Legions, were mostly not and bore sharps (I was told at the time that the XX was more about the civic displays in Chester than traditional re-enactment - I suspect they have changed a lot since then).

http://pics.livejournal.com/salvianus/gallery/0000fwbp

The organisers agreed to stage the fight so long as it was fully scripted and participants only used very specific movements: 'push' flat on the shield rather than strike, 'thrust' past wide of the body and 'draw-cut' with the flat, nothing on the helms.

This enabled a fine display of the barritus, steppan, shield-wall etc and the last barbarians fell down on cue, but the safety instructions did not prevent widespread damage to Roman equipment, lots of shield edging gone, a crest gone, a helmet split in two and several injuries, including one very nice bloke from Chester who got a blunt metal spear in the face and was very stoic about an injury that would have sent me running off to casualty hock:

One could say that long trained combat blunt reflexes took over to cause the lapses in the safety rules, but who trains to strike the head? Perhaps less 'combat' experienced Romans did not cover themselves as barbarians expected them to, but why were shield edges chopped? I think a mismatch in experience and equipment excacerbated a dangerous idea: that one can re-enact combat with sharps or untrained participants.