So, Saturday saw my first official derby gig of the year. This one was announcing(as I suspect/hope many will be this year) for Tarzan and Pain held at Ponds Forge in Sheffield.
The first bout was MMR taking on SSRG and was a bout fraut with injuries for MMR which is never a good thing to see. I think it's fair to say that as a spectator of Roller Derby we want to see the big hits and the players getting flattened but we also like to see them pop back up and go back for revenge or more punishment. When a skater stays down you can tell that everyone in attendance feels for that skater at that moment. A thought has just struck me about this. The etiquette for when a skater goes down injured is for the skaters to take a knee out of respect, but how far should the respectful knee be taken? Should it extend to NSOs, Announcers, the crowd? Anyway I digress...
After the excitement provided by the first bout the crowd were warmed up and ready for the Merby action to start. For those uninitiated sorts out there Merby is mens derby and is essentially a chance for the various referees up and down the country to don gumshields and smash each other about a bit. I was joined on the mic by SSRGs Miss D Nightshade taking the plunge of announcing her first roller derby bout.
The thing that struck me about Merby is that the pace and the aggression levels are increased ten fold from the womens game and so it becomes a game of pretty much one tactic: If he ain't upright then he ain't in a position to do anything!
Of course, Referees being far from shy we were treated to a few displays of showboating and playing to the crowd, sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn't.
One of my fellow skaters at NRG also seems to have coined a new term which was displayed proudly on the t-shirts of the NRG skaters in the crowd (cheering on NRGs very own Man Shaped Dog and Chemic-Al). The phrase of course is "Broller Derby" and all credit for this must go to Nigella Lawless.
Sunday saw an old friend of mine swing by the NRG squad training session ready to write an article about us for his magazine Deviant.co.uk. He brought his photographer with him and while he snapped away, Deviant Dean grabbed words from our captain and vice captain. The next issue of Deviant.co.uk goes live on Tuesday and I'm looking forward to seeing the NRG team in all their glory.
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