Fatherdog:
I fenced a bit in college too (in fact, I think the trenton state fencing club website may still have "designed by David Moraski" at the bottom of their webpage). I eventually couldn't fit it into my schedule. Working two jobs killed a lot of potential activities in school. I loved sabre, though. But then, I also did midieval reenactment fighting in college, and sabre had a lot more crossover than the others.... although I was surprised at how many foil techniques were directly applicable to polearms.
I've had the same thought about it translating to longstaff, although as an impact weapon, thrusting as a riposte probably isn't going to get the job done on its own.

Sabre is beautiful, yeah. First weapon I fenced with, oddly enough. (The fencing club in college weren't sticklers for classic fencing methodology. They were mostly crossover SCA guys. Like you mentioned.)

My first bout, I fenced the president of the club (also named Stuart, oddly enough) with sabre. Noticed he used what we call a 'roof block' or 'wing' in eskrima. Wouldn't be at all surprised if they called it a roof block in fencing too, of course.

I actually got disarms on a semi-frequent basis; largely because I have freakishly strong wrists, and when I was pressed I would often panic and parry far too hard.
I was notorious for resisting disarms in eskrima because of my freakishly flexible wrists. Particularly in competition. You only get a second or two to effect a disarm. And my rubber band wrists usually meant my opponent had to work at it longer than that. In fact, I won one fight in San Francisco based largely on my opponent wracking up something like 20 failed disarm attempts. They don't count against you pointwise, but they do make you look ineffectual after a while. Especially when coupled with all the backpedaling he was doing (mostly to maintain largo mano long range, in his defense).

The fact that the only other person who showed up as regularly as me was the club president, who was also an honest to god midget, meant that I got pretty good in a disproportionately short time. You try hitting a target that small while defending 6'4" of yourself....
Well, I'm a mere 6'1" myself. But my friend is about 6'3", and I'm seeing how the height plays into it, yeah. My other friend is... oh, I don't know. Five nine perhaps. Not short. But shorter. And I've noticed that Mike (6'3") tends to attack when he's rightfully at Daws' (5'9") attack range. So he either crowds his own attack (resulting in something more like b!tchslapping Daws with the side of the blade) or getting stabbed by Daws before he gets his attack off.

But once Mike started to learn how to attack from further away, that changed the equation considerably. Of course, we're all beginners. So Daws is still learning to capitalize on the height difference. He's aggressive though, so as he works on it, I think Mike and I are going to spend more time trying to keep Daws out of our grills.


Stuart B.