Back in ancient times, France centre Mathieu Bastareaud might have made a potent human battering ram or cannon ball, causing castle portcullises to shudder under his might.
At 19 stone and no more than 6 foot, the Toulon player is a handful to say the least - although his overall game is often consistently criticised - and a couple of Irish rugby players have spoken about coming face to face with him on Off The Ball.
On this week's Wednesday Night Rugby, Paddy Jackson gave us a bit of an insight, having faced the 26-year-old in the Champions Cup:
"I try to go as low as I can. On at least two occasions, he's come up to me straight afterwards and apologised. He's actually a really nice guy. We were playing Toulon in a home game for Ulster and he took a short ball off a maul and he got no momentum whatsoever, so I still dived at his ankles. But I just stood there and I was holding onto his ankles. I felt like a school kid and he was standing with the ball, trying to offload it to someone. So I remember looking up and he still had the ball and then he just kind of laughed at me. I've had good craic off the pitch with him as well. He's a really nice guy. He's a good guy and obviously hard to tackle."
Ulster's Paddy Jackson and Craig Gilroy tackle Mathieu Bastareaud of Toulon ©INPHO/Dan Sheridan
Brian O'Driscoll also once spoke about Gordon D'Arcy's reaction after he left his former long-time team-mate isolated one on one with Bastareaud:
"For me he's undefendable. How do you stop him? I remember in the Six Nations against France, I left him one on one with D'Arcy and he didn't even need to say anything to me afterwards. He just gave me the the stare, like 'how could you do that to me?'"
Before Munster played Toulon in last year's Heineken Cup, Ireland captain Paul O'Connell also answered a question from Off The Ball's Dave McIntyre about how to minimise the strengths that Bastareaud possesses:
"The first thing to do is make sure you carry well, place well and don't give them an opportunity to get locked in. After that you've got to get him out of there before it becomes a ruck. And if he does get locked on it, you probably do need two or three people to get him off the ball. It's as simple as that."
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