Rodeo Rugby Ball Hire

Manufacturer/supplier: GS Engineering.

The Rodeo Rugby Ball - also called a Bucking Rugby Ball or a mechanical rugby ball ride - is one of our multi-ride attachments. It bolts onto the same electric motion base we use for our rodeo bull, sheep, reindeer and pig. The ball itself is a giant Gilbert-branded rugby ball. Gilbert have been making rugby balls since 1823, and they're the official ball supplier for the Rugby World Cup, so the branding on the ball is genuine, not a knock-off. It mounts in the centre of an inflatable bed, which means when the ride bucks, spins and eventually throws you off, you land on something soft.

One of our operators runs the ride throughout your hire. The rodeo rugby ball isn't self-supervised. The operator controls the speed and spin from a handset, so the ride gets pitched to whoever is on it - slower for a ten-year-old at a birthday party, properly aggressive for a prop forward at a rugby club social. An LED timer shows the current ride time and the best time of the day, so there's always a score to beat. The aim is simple: stay on as long as you can while the ball bucks, spins and eventually throws you.

Size, power and setup

• Riders need to be aged 10 or over, at least 1.2 metres tall, and able to climb on and off unaided
• Flat operating area about 18ft by 18ft, with roughly 10ft of headroom if you're indoors
• One standard 13amp socket; if the nearest socket is more than about 50 metres from where the ride will sit, we'll need to bring a generator instead
• Access needs to be about a metre wide to get the kit through
• Staffed throughout the hire by one of our operators
• Fully ADIPS certified

For outdoor bookings we can supply a six-legged inflatable spider marquee. It's 21 feet in diameter with pull-down sides, so the whole ride sits under cover and the event keeps running in light rain. It's large enough for the ride and a few spectators.

Works well at

It tends to work at rugby club events, Six Nations screenings and pre-match entertainment, but it isn't only for rugby crowds. We've taken it to corporate fun days, stag parties, birthday parties, school sports days and festivals. Paul booked the rodeo bull from the same range for an evening do and wrote afterwards that it was "bucking brilliant". Karen had the rodeo bull alongside sumo suits and human bowling at a child's birthday, and said the two operators we sent "were great with the kids, promoting fun whilst still retaining that air of 'safety conscious'". Enham, a registered charity, used our rodeo set-up for a fundraising event in a Southampton shopping centre and said the operator Jamie "was very friendly, professional and extremely helpful".

It's also a useful option as a multi-ride attachment at larger events where the base unit stays in place and we swap the ball for a different rodeo theme partway through the day.

Rodeo rides and other competitive attractions

If you want the same idea with a different theme, the Rodeo Bull is the classic wild-west version, the Rodeo Sheep and Rodeo Pig are gentler siblings that go down well with younger riders, and there's a Rodeo Reindeer and Rodeo Pumpkin for seasonal events. For other rugby-themed kit, have a look at the Bungee Eliminator which works as a one-on-one contest. The full rodeo rides range is on one page.

Rodeo rugby ball hire across Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London

We've run Monster Event Hire from our unit in Havant since 2002, and the kit is all ours, so the person who turns up to run the rugby ball is one of our own staff and not a sub-contractor. They have passed the RPII operator and supervisor exams, are first-aid trained, and hold enhanced DBS certificates, which matters for school and council bookings. The electrics are PAT-tested every year. Every inflatable is inspected once a year by our in-house RPII inspector under the PIPA scheme that the HSE recognises, and it's built to BS EN 14960:2019. We carry £10 million public liability insurance, with the certificate and the risk assessment on request, and we hold additional licensed-premises cover, so we can run the ball at a pub, club or bar.

We cover Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and London, including Havant, Portsmouth, Southampton, Winchester, Fareham and Waterlooville. Tell us the date, the venue and roughly how many you're expecting, and we will put a quote together.