A Quick Update

Team Photo taken for Portsmouth News 15.01.11

So since the last post on here was almost two months ago I thought it was way due an update on here, even more so when the team continues to go from strength to strength, to the point were we have been forced to setup a waiting list for potential new skaters, with the interest in the team only growing since the team got featured in two local papers, with “R.I.P McMurphy” even becoming our first featured cover girl (or should be Cover wench?) for "The Daily Echo". Needless to say it was an interesting conversation trying to explain what derby was to my Grandparents, much less my Granny Mac referring to me by my derby name, after I sent them copies of the articles.

R.I.P McMurphy - The Southern Echo 15.01.11

Still while we might have a girls queuing up around the block to earn their place, sadly the same cannot be said for our hunt for Referee’s which so far has only attracted a couple of people, which in a way I can understand, especially as being a ref might not seem like the most exciting role to play seeing how you have the dusty tome, which is the rules of Roller Derby to memorise while the derby gals are having all that fun, skating hard and knocking lumps out of each other, but I’ve been honestly surprised by how much fun being a Ref is, especially seeing how fast paced this sport is, just calling penalties and looking out for misplays is strangely exhilarating and with stripes being so sliming what is there not to like about the role?

As part of my on going training regime for the role, I have frequently found myself sponging whatever tips and info I can off the ref’s from other more established teams, especially seeing how I’m the first ref this team had, so lacking in any form of senior ref to learn from, which only makes it all the more amusing when I have my fellow ref’s advising me to speak to the team’s Head ref, which via the process of elimination would mean that person is….err well me and seeing how talking to myself didn’t seem overly constructive, I have spent most of these last few months, no doubt bugging the hell out of any ref, willing to field my numerous questions. One person in particular I can credit as being a big help would be “Scoot’her” who is currently a ref with the “Brighton Rockers” and who was also nice to come and run a training session with the team, which was not only great in terms of giving us new drills to try, but also helped re-inspire my Derby Ref dream by helping me to refocus my efforts and to also show me a standard to aim for, which honestly really helps especially with not having a more senior ref in our league.

Outside of training it’s safe to say that my attempts to complete “The Roller Derby Challenge” failed miserably, thanks to various events which meant that I not only fell behind, but was left completely unmotivated in terms of running drills or anything else concerning the challenge, but I guess there will always be next year. Still in the meantime I’m still skating hard, even though I’m finding now that my gear is holding me back, in particular my skates, which are currently still the same Roller Derby M1 Vipers I started with, which I know a lot of skaters frown on and generally write off as being crap, but they have been good skates to learn with but now I generally find myself needing the next level of skate, so hence the reason I'm currently working stupid amounts of overtime in the forth circle of hell, better known as my day job (who contractally can't be named), trying to scrape the extra cash together to get myself a pair of Riedell’s, which would ideally be my next skates and which currently continue to elude me, thanks to bills mysteriously appearing as soon as I get close to the funds I need, so looks like I’m gonna be with my current skates for abit longer, unless some nice person at Riedell’s decides to send me a pair (hint hint).

Still with so many of the team getting close to passing minimum skills and hence allowing us to field our first team in the derby leagues, I’m only working harder to cram these rules and learn the various hand signals and whistles, so here’s hoping that it all eventually slots into place, otherwise I guess their might be more than a few confused folks, wondering what sort of confused version of the YMCA I appear to attempting on skates, which while no doubt amusing as hell, really isn’t constructive in terms of reffing.

The Hunt For Stripes Begins

So Portsmouth is still in the grip of a blizzard, giving the more work shy yet another reason to skive off work and were my own work place is concerned only adding to my daily personal hell I call the working week, listening to moronic customers complaining about their TV not working, or the fact that they have no broadband, which in the grand scheme of things really isn’t overly that important. Still it's not that you could tell this from the stream of expletives that I usually find myself on the receiving end of on a daily basis, but then I’m sure you could take any group of people involved in this sport and they would be able to regale you with their own similar tales of their daily mundane work lives, but then this is what makes Derby such a great sport, for no matter how crappy a week you have had, you can pretty much guarantee that by the end of a good derby training session you will be feeling a whole lot better, but then again this is no doubt the reasons that so many players refer to it as being their “Therapy”.

The other downside to this sodding snow is how like the rain, it prevents any additional training being done, making the Sunday training sessions only all the more important especially when it’s still such a daunting list of basic skills that are still to be mastered, with this almost obsessional need to cram in further training, leading to me spending the morning running around the garden attacking the snow with my wife’s hairdryer while shouting “Die you bastard snow!”.

Sunday's training session marked the final training session of this years derby season, which was made a little more special than usual, with the local paper showing up to do another article on the team, which i'm sure once it gets published I will get transcribed onto here for anyone who is intrested, especially as I’m real curious to know what they think about not only the team, but the sport on a whole, for although it is steadily becoming more recognised as a sport, rather than it's misguided public idea, of it basically being an excuse for folks to strap on a pair of quads and beat the snot out of each other, an image which is changing along with public opinion, especially as derby continues to grow and evolve with each passing year, though I do wonder if the sport will ever become mainstream, especially when it was such mainstreaming which lead to the decline of the sport in the first place and it’s truly the punk DIY aspect of the sport, which continues to help the sport grow, rather than sponsorship deals and fake celebrity status’s overshadowing proceedings.

Meanwhile as I continue in my attempts to learn the rules, which is getting there slowly, while occasionally throwing out fun interesting facts, in particular this rule.

9.4.2 Referees must be uniformed in a manner that makes them easily identifiable as the officials for the bout, e.g. a black and white striped shirt.

So according to this rule, it means that the ref pack can wear pretty much what they want, as long as they are all wearing the same thing to indentify their position, despite this fact the majority of ref’s tend to favour the traditional zebra stripes, rather than something slightly more erm….shall we say exotic, which this ruling leaves pretty open to personal interpretation. These traditional stripes not only make it a lot easier to keep a uniformed pack, especially when importing ref’s from other teams to cover the bouts, which is certainly something that we may end up having to do, when the team does become bout ready. In the meantime before I get too far ahead of myself, I still have to pass not only minimum skills, but also a ref exam as well which is reallyall the more daunting, especially when I look at the sheer amount of revision I still have ahead of me, which is something I wasn’t expecting to become such an epic task, much like finding my own set of strips, for as tempting as the Ann Summers outfit that Michelle had recommended, I really didn’t think I could pull it off, which I sure was a cause of much mass relief for the wenches and anyone potentially considering attending any of our future bouts.

Still it would seem that finding a set of ref stripes here in the UK is far from the easiest thing, with the usual sources like “Amazon” and “Ebay”, all drawing a frustrating blank, so now it currently looks like I will be having to import my shirts, despite some unique ideas from “Zebra Huddle”, which again only highlights how DIY the derby community can be, with stories of finding discarded “Foot Locker” uniforms to one ref spray painting his own stripes, achieving an effect described a “Distressed”, though short of mugging “Foot Locker” employees I think that importing shirts will still be my best option, though seeing how the majority of stores will also do the back plate I can also see it saving on another big headache when it came to sorting that out, much like trying to find skates for my darn hobbit feet, but then no one said this was going to be easy.