Last night saw the Canberra Roller Derby League’s first public bout of a sport that is experiencing a renaissance, both here and around the world – Roller Derby. NOW WITH SLIDE SHOW AT THE END OF THE POST!
Two teams of committed, focused, saucy wenches took to the parquetry floor of Southern Cross Club’s Tuggeranong indoor sports centre, decked out in some hellish mixture of lycra, fishnets, tutus and body armour for Hell-On-Wheels: A Halloween Bout.
Roller Derby is a strange beast. Populated by strong willed liberated women it’s both gritty and beautiful. It’s fast paced and theatrical; burlesque team speed skating. It’s physical; rugby tackles while running a marathon. It is Entertainment.
For the uninitiated, those few who have impossibly missed the previous Roller Derby stories on Riot, Roller Derby is a female dominated full contact team sport involving two teams of five on old school four wheel roller-skates racing around a track. An informative Wiki entry on the sport, its rules and history can be found here. The ABC seems to have been interested supporting the sport backing and airing the great doco, Roller Derby Girls and with ACT Stateline airing a preview of this very match.
There is no doubt Roller Derby is a spectacle and the sellout crowd, including members of interstate Roller Derby leagues from our near north and as far flung as South Australia, packing the bleachers to the roof added to this in their own unique way with horns, pompoms, costumes and enthusiasm.
Once the MC, one Matt Frawley, had corralled the crowd the ever charming Chanel Cole, dressed in the height of ‘50’s housewife splendour, wowed and wooed with a gorgeous and whimsical rendition of the National Anthem that had, for the first time I’ve heard in a long time, the crowd launching into massive applause at its conclusion.
And then out came the teams.
Adorned in the colours of the bruises both teams are bound to be sporting today we were introduced to the Black & Blue Belles. Lead in by their captain, #35 – Melicious Damage, the Belle’s and then the Surley Griffins in white and green, captained by the passionate Ova Bearing, paraded around the track, each playing up for the crowd in a way that epitomised their stage personas. There were whips, capes, scythes, knee-highs, fishnets, tutus and facepaint. There was shimmying and blown kisses, fist pumping and powerslides. Overall there was Attitude.
After the introduction of the Refs, with just as much showmanship, the head referee being paraded around in a chariot, the game was set.
Played in two 30 minute halves; each half made up of multiple 2 minute ‘Jams’, the first half was fast. Really fast. I wasn’t the only one to get dizzy just watching them.
The Griffins took an early lead only to find, after consecutive of their Jammer’s got sinbinned, the Belle’s take a commanding 20 point lead with only minutes to half time. In a blink of an eye it was the Belle’s suffering sinbinning and with the girls visibly tiring the Griffin’s put on two impressive jams to be one point up 65-64 at half time.
The second half was a different affair but just as enthralling. Both teams, seeming having taken the lesson of coming out pumped by the crowd at 110% in the first half could be seen to be taking things more tactically in the second. The Griffin’s star Jammer, # 4.11 – Bambi Von Smasher, had to this untrained eye been successfully countered by the Belles in the first half but in the second half she really showed her stuff. She wasn’t the only one with some impressive skating from both teams, ducking a weaving through seemingly impenetrable packs of opposition blockers.
Again penalties started playing a major part and although the Refs seemed to be ejecting members of both teams the Griffins faired better on the scoreboard extending their lead to 118-90 over the Belles with 15 minutes to go. About now the Griffin’s #27 – Dee Nature turned it on assisting their jammer with two great ‘whips’, a move not seem up til then in the match where one skater flings their arm forward propelling a skater on their own team past them. The Belle’s attempted to fight back with some gutsy jams by Roulette Rouge but as the final whistle blew the Griffin’s had come out on top with a commanding 40 point win, 149-109.
The final score didn’t really reflect the closeness of the match and even during periods where one or the other team seemed to have an unassailable lead the other would pull off a 10 to 15 point jam. The oohs and ahhs, cheers and boos of the crowd often had little to do with the actual score but when a jammer sliced through the pack, seeing a blocker take a tumble, booty blocks or the roar as a favoured skater returned from the sinbin.
If you want to get involved with Roller Derby in Canberra, as a player, ref or just as importantly spectator then go to the Canberra Roller Derby League website, email them via canberrarollerderby@gmail.com or become friends with Canberra Derby on facebook . Otherwise keep an eye out on Riot as no doubt RiotACT member CRDL will be keeping us posted as to their activities.
i was super pissed to have to miss this event last night (was out of town) – sounds like it was even more awesome than i thought it would be – am totally going to go to the december bout!!!
I was there last night, the proud holder of ticket number 17. Had no idea it was sold out until we got there. Had an absolute awesome time. So much FUN. Have been keenly watching the league evolve over the past year and it was great to see such a well organised, entertaining and fun early evening out and of course to see it being such a success for the CRDL.. Roller Derby Rocks and go you Surly Griffins!
why did you have to tack on a little ad for the hollywood appropriation at the end
Fair point as the hollywood film is not canberra focused but I added to encourage more mainstream exposure to the sport as people can catch the film far easier than waiting for the next game.
That said I’ve removed it from the article and and placed it here:
‘Roller Derby is also in the cinema at the moment with Whip It.’
Better?
Absolutely awesome.
We are so glad that folks enjoyed the event! We had a blast sharing roller derby with Canberra. What a fantastic crowd!
FYI our new website is being built, keep an eye on: http://www.canberrarollerderbyleague.com
I think fair enough to reference the Hollywood movie. After all, if people want to watch something to get an idea of what roller derby is all about, the choices are the doco, Hollywood movie, or YouTube.
Pics or it didn’t happen!
Pics were taken but firstly not many of them came out that well and secondly I lack the tech knowledge to get them up. Liaising with the other admins atm to rectify that
expect images soon but if any one else has photos feel free to send them in!
Last night was an amazingly well organised event and hugely entertaining all round. Congratulations to those involved (not me) – great job! The next bout for CRDL is scheduled for 21 November. Tickets on sale soon….. get in early!
This was a good event, but please, the CRDL needs to relax the penalties for contact or at least have the referees explain why they’re sending a constant stream of players, including both jammers on occasion, to the sin bin.
After observing several players immediately before they were binned I couldn’t make sense of what they’d done wrong, and in a lot of cases it seemed they couldn’t either.
RiotPost said :
Let me help you with that…
http://www.google.com.au/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&=&q=how+to+upload+photos&btnG=Google+Search&meta=lr%3D&aq=f&oq=
By the gods, proofread. You’re missing words, have extra apostrophes, peppered it with typos, etc.
Otherwise, I hope to see more
bloodsport derbyfull contact rolling, but less sinbinning would be nice…Do men play this sport?
yeah i had a great time there, was really impressed with the skill shown by all the players. I do agree with bileduct that there seems to be a lot of jammers being sent off for no apparent reason. Considering they are usually trying to get past blockers and it usually ther blockers initialising contact it seemed a little bit silly how often they got sent of. with both jammers off it got a little boring. Perhaps i just need to watch more matches to understand it better. which i plan to do
only other critisizm was the half time break was way way way to long. 30mins?
overall it was awesome and im looking forward to the next match.
oh does anyone know if any roller derby leagues use the same kind of tracks as were usid in the Whip It movie? i imagine you could go a lot faster in an inclined track?
What a great night out. My girls are even more enamoured of roller derby now
The crowd were fantastic – it was great to see so many people getting in the spirit of the occasion by dressing up. The swing dancers at half time were pretty spiffy too.
We’ll definitely be getting in early for tickets for the next bout.
I took lots of photos but most of them aren’t so great. I’ll email some of the good ones to RiotPost if they want to include them?
Pris
Hi, If your interested in knowing about how penalties work and why girls are sent off the track, you can read the rules of the game at http://wftda.com/rules Rollerderby is a very rule heavy game, it is this way because it’s a full contact sport and serious injuries are very common. The refs are there to make sure the game is safe. Something else to bear in mind is that this was the first bout for this league and if you take a look at the rules you’ll understand that it’s going to be pretty hard to remember all of the things you can and can’t do as a skater. As the girls become more familiar with the rules, we’ll start seeing less penalties called. As for Banked track Rollerderby (a la ‘Whip it’), this game is only in the USA at the moment, AUS doesn’t have any banked track leagues however as the game becomes more popular here, we might well see banked track leagues as well as flat track. Thanks for coming to the game and we’ll see you at the next bout.
Thanks everyone for the support – the crowd was fantastic!
bileduct – penalties are cumulative. When a player has got 4 minor penalties, she will be sent to the bin. Sometimes this makes it seem like someone is being sent to the bin for something small, but what has actually happened is she already has 3 penalties against her and this is the 4th one. This is indicated by the ref pointing toward the bin and holding out 4 fingers, rather than pointing with one finger (as for a major). I hope this clears it up a little!
There should never be 2 jammers in the bin at once – the rules say when the second jammer gets there, the first one is released. This is how we played it on the weekend.
I doubt we’ll be changing the rules but we will be practicing like crazy to avoid getting penalties! Come to bout 2 and beyond, hopefully we will keep getting better and better
Sounds complicated. If I wanted to see chunky chicks wearing skin tight attire I’d go to the Chisolm Tavern.
Mmmmmmmm legs to get lost in…..
Trunking symbols said :
Apparently not.
VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :
They weren’t all chunky VY
Trunking symbols said :
Men play Rollerball.
VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy said :
Yeah right. You can just hang out at summernats. No chunky chicks in skintight clothing there, nosiree
magella said :
They have even more quality control problems…
can you bring it to the northside?
Chop71 said :
don’t be lazy, it’s a 15 minute drive :p
R. Slicker said :
Not in this league – you can ref though. I believe there is a men’s league starting in Melbourne.
more photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/d-eye/sets/72157622546027763/
Melicious said :
Not really. The point I was making was that the reason for the penalties was unclear – perhaps the refs can assist in this area by using a hands free mic and have them call out the penalties as they occur. The announcers certainly had no idea why people were being sin binned, so what hope does the crowd have?
bileduct said :
Early in the game and on at least two occasions both jammers were sitting in the sin bin for a length of time. Presumably, someone figured out that this shouldn’t happen and for the rest of the game one jammer would depart as another arrived, as you suggested.
Anyway, as said, it was a good event for a fledgling league.