The Dutch boys are hurting. They are being remorselessly inched across the black rubber mat with excruciating precision by a bunch of pale-limbed and flush faced Irishmen who stare down the taut, swaying rope with the cold eyed certainty of imminent victors.
Jeffe Velde is at the front for the Netherlands, eyes frantic and features twisted as the scarcely discernible concession of territory becomes more pronounced and their struggle to avoid the nearing red marker becomes so desperate as to be pitiful. Their vain writhing seems to belong in a framed and dusty Caravaggio, anywhere other than downtown Carlow.
But they are miserable; in truth, Jeffe could not look more dismayed, more anguished, if he was being dragged off the edge of the earth.
For our part, we holler at their pain, cheer their encroaching demise. All week long, the Carlow youth centre has been the unlikely focal point for similar jousts determined by strength, technique and basic masochism.
On this Saturday afternoon, rope enthusiasts from across the world are wandering around the venue. The whole show is an impossible blend of Irish mart and foreign exotica. Solid, smoking local men in crombies brush shoulders with lightish, smoking Japanese youths in flashy Asics tracksuits. They carry camcorders and you can't but feel that some of this is going to end up on Clive James.
A women's team from Minneapolis are pulling for the US. There are teams for Chinese Taipei and a men's unit from India, entered in the 680kg section, the Irish stronghold. From Coolock to Kobelco, they have come for the weekend, sharing nothing in common save calloused hands and a love for this most invisible of sports, tug-o-war.
"It's truly amateur. You'll see the medal at the end of the day and it's probably worth a fiver," says Billy Reilly, an Offaly man exiled in Manchester for most of his life and one of the Reilly brothers who caused tremors on the tug circuit back when they duelled in the fresh air. On Saturday, he coached the England 560kg men's team to gold.
"Put it this way, there'll be no photographers clickin' when we come home. It grieves me some times when I see the top soccer players or whatever getting thousands of pounds. These lads train savagely and diet ferociously. We're staying in a beautiful hotel up the road with great food, big Irish breakfasts. These boys eat an orange or two. They make huge sacrifices to meet the weight. So they'll eat and drink themselves silly tonight."
Their final, against the Spanish, was an epic affair, the defining second pull stretching for some five minutes. While his boys strained, Billy paced the line, a hulking figure, loosely track-suited, sweating behind a walrus 'tache.
They see the coach as Magi in this sport. The Netherlands employ a meditative Rasputin type, who kneels contemplatively at the front while his charges labour on. The Japanese coach darts down the team, horsewhipping the ground with what appears to be a tiny traffic cone. Billy, he conducts with orchestral sweeps, now urging his boys to hold firm, now demanding that they pull left. Sometimes, he even whispers in their ears.
"There is no place to hide. You know your weakest link. The ideal rope is honed, if they start fidgeting, you can tell. It's about how far you can push yourself, relying on your heart. Like, today, we struggled at the front for a while and the lads behind were getting edgy. You try and steady them, ask for that bit more. The gentle touch works with some, with others, you'd be more severe."
The intrigue and pendulous momentum of the Spain-England final enraptured all those present. For what seemed like an eternity, the English initiated an attack - an odd term, given that retreat is the aim - all veins and grimaces and panting. The Spaniards leaned back and looked to the heavens, seemingly impervious to the pressure. Even when they began to lose traction, they remained poker-faced.
In the crowd, hoary old students of the art surveyed the fevered wreckage at either end of the 32 metres of suspended fibre and murmured their shrewd, prophetic judgements. The English seized upon a faint give, set their clamps on at least the notion of advantage and began what proved to be the death pull, coaxed on by Billy's urgent flourishes.
When the Spaniards fell in exhausted capitulation, the tug-o'-war team celebrated with the same intensity as did the French in Paris last summer or the Galway boys in those stilly seconds after the All-Ireland.
"The joy to be had, the camaraderie to be had, is unbelievable. You give so much of yourself on that rope that winning is such a release," assesses Anthony Pender, the director of this year's world indoor championship.
Laid back and benignly humoured, Pender's is a familiar face around the tug-o'-war heartlands of this country. The indoor sport was formally consecrated around a decade ago and although there are still purists who believe that only the natural elements befit such a noble pursuit, the indoor discipline has gained great ground.
"If anything, it's harder. In fields, you can lay your weight behind a divot - here you have nothing," he says.
Pender speaks passionately about his sport, throwing in the word "minority" as though it is a fact, an irrelevancy, not something he particularly sees the need to alter.
Truth is, it would be difficult to imagine tug o' war as anything other. On the mats, another set of teams file past each other and pick up the rope. A referee, stern faced and black eyed raises his hands with reverential exaggeration.
"Take the strain" he commands, and both teams fall back until the rope cuts straight as a wrought-iron bar. "Pull," he shouts.
In the crowd, eyes fire up at the pain as the athletes lay bare their souls and the whole occasion seems as furtive and primal as a cock fight.
