Bale's ball skills

Watch Gareth Bale introduce his Madrid team-mates to rugby in a series of ball-based challenges.

Gareth Bale was encouraged to embrace Spanish culture to become a hit in Madrid, but it appears the world's most expensive player has also introduced some home comforts of his own. Bringing some Welsh rugby flair to the Bernabeu, the £85million man may just have converted a few of his team-mates. Ahead of his debut appearance in this Saturday's el Clasico meeting with Barcelona, live on Sky Sports, bwin challenged Bale and his fellow Real Madrid superstars Luka Modric, Karim Benzema and Jesé Rodríguez to demonstrate their skills with a variety of different balls. After displaying phenomenal ball control with a football, squash ball and even a giant exercise ball, the Real Madrid all-stars took on the Rugby Union challenge and Bale produced a performance that has to be seen to be believed in an impromptu crossbar challenge. Following instruction from Modric, Bale nails a crunching rugby ball volley to knock a drinks bottle off the frame of the goal and then follows it up with a long-distance drop-goal that would have made Jonny Wilkinson proud. Watch for yourself below. Speaking after completing the filming for Real Madrid's skills challenge, Gareth Bale said: "You can see the skill of the players, everything is unbelievable, the standard is so high." Karim Benzema agreed, "All of my teammates have strong technical skills. That makes it much easier for us when we play together on the pitch." Luka Modric added: "Real Madrid is famous for accuracy, ball control and skills!" To watch the Real Madrid video, as well as all the other upcoming team challenges, head to www.youtube.com/bwin and subscribe