'Merby' (or Men's roller derby) is often looked upon as the lesser derby sport. Perhaps because of the number of people playing it, perhaps because it's a sport more generally associated with women and I'm sure there are other reasons but I don’t really have time to get into them right now.
However, I am a roller derby PLAYER (not a referee), and Tarzan and Pain was my first real Merby bout ever.
Travelling to Sheffield I was nowhere near as nervous as I thought I was going to be. I knew the boys on my team well, knew a few of the guys on the opposition and, all things being equal, we were quite well matched. One key difference however, was that our team had a large proportion of guys who practice and skate together at MRD on a regular basis.
One of the arguments in opposition to the sport of Men's derby is that there is a lack of team play. There is an idea that it's just a bunch of men on skates hitting the crap out of each other... and sometimes it is. On this occasion though, us MRD boys definitely got some amazing team play in there.
The game was set to be us (The Kings of the Swingers) against them (The Jungle VIPs), and I don't mind say they had some pretty large VIPs. Our side had an awesome bench team and captain who told us straightaway that we would win if we stuck together, communicated and kept our mouthguards in/language down.
Before I knew it the first whistle blew and I was on the track. I'm not sure if it's just me but you go into some kind of 'game hypnosis' when you're playing. Someone had told me once before that you can’t hear the crowd in a game situation and you really couldn’t (apart from a certain MRD NSO whose scream has to be heard to be believed...).
After a shaky start the line-up arranging fell into a good rhythm and we were all communicating well on the track. All our preparation really began to show and we took the lead. It happened slowly at first then the gap widened until by half time we were about 60 points ahead.
Following a brief half-time rest and after the realisation had hit that my body was actually performing reasonably well, the second half began and something just seemed to click. There were some standout jam performances from Crash Matt, First Aiden and Jerry Atric that served to push our score way up into the stratosphere.
The Jungle VIPs continued to fight hard with awesomely nippy jams from Jammie Dodger and Lil Joker, but The Kings of the Swingers we were up, way up, and the final score rested at 269-86 to us. I was amazed!
In conclusion, I'd like to thank...
- The Sheffield Steel Roller Girls for putting us on
- EVERYONE who came to watch
- Jude and Zine (who had an awesome bench/line up combo going on)
- The boys on both teams
My hope is that the success of this event moves Merby forward in the UK, partly because the MRD boys are going to need some teams to play and also because it's an amazing sport that absolutely everyone should be able to enjoy!
Bonfire bye byes,
Gay Fawkes
