MRD’s Phoenixes Fire Up

Manchester Roller Derby’s NEW team are to debut on Saturday 21 April in the club's first home bout of the year.

The bout will be a double-header featuring the debut of our newest team, The Phoenix Furies, as they take on local rivals, Preston Roller Girls. The Furies have been working hard in preparation for their first bout and are excited to show their home city what they are made of.

Spectators will also witness Manchester Roller Derby’s Checker Broads return after a triumphant two-game winning streak, which has seen them secure victories in both Birmingham and Liverpool. They take on Dundee Roller Girls in a return match following MRD’s away game win last year.

We recently celebrated our second birthday and are feel as though we're going from strength to strength. There are now two women’s teams, a men’s team and a constant stream of new members eager to try out this exciting sport.

For those of you that may not already know, roller derby is a fast-paced hard-hitting sport which has rapidly gained a place in the hearts of all who experience it. The full contact sport is played on quad roller skates with two teams on an oval track. Points are scored by one individual from each team, known as a jammer, who must race to get through the pack against hard defensive play from the opposing team and with the help of their own team.

The home bout is being held at the Armitage Centre, Moseley Road, Fallowfield in Manchester on Saturday 21 April 2012 (9 days from the date of this post!). Doors open at 1pm and first whistle will be at 2pm. Children are welcome as this is a family friendly event and under 10s get in free. There will be merchandise and craft stalls, DJs, a raffle and other games.

Tickets cost £7 in advance (£6 concessions) so save yourself and your friends/family some pennies by getting yours now http://www.manchesterrollerderby.co.uk, or by visiting http://tinyurl.com/mrdaprilbout

Vic Tori Bee on what it's like being training manager at MRD

What has been the highlight of your time as training manager at MRD so far and what are you most proud of?

Zero to Hero III has been the highlight of my time as training manager and when taking on the role it was what I was most looking forward to, despite being very nervous about it! This Zero to Hero programme for new skaters is unlike any we have done in the past; rather than a 12-week programme it is now continuous with intake every six weeks. New skaters can learn at their own pace, repeating the 6-week programme as many times as they wish. The calibre of skaters moving through the programme and into team training is brilliant and I guess this is what I am most proud of!

What has been your biggest challenge in the role?

The entirety of the role has been challenging and that’s what I love most about it. I do love a challenge! From finding my own teaching style to organising endless lists of skaters, it’s all been a big learning curve.  We’ve had over 100 people sign up for Zero To Hero so far this year, with around 15 - 20 starting each intake.

How many people passed their minimum skills at last testing?

25th March saw the first minimum skill assessment for this year’s Heroes and they did great, far exceeding my expectations. Six passed all of their skate skills and another 17 were hot on their heels, with only a couple of skills left to nail.  The following week these skaters found themselves back in the classroom to sit the rules test. It’s a very challenging test, even for those skaters with up to 12 months experience and it is rare people pass first time. Safe in this knowledge, I offered to bake cheesecakes for any hero who passed first time. I now have FOUR (much deserved!) cheesecakes to bake!

What is your favourite thing about the new skaters?

My favourite thing about the new skaters is their eagerness to learn, and I especially love the giggles as they hit the deck.  It’s also great seeing all the new friendships blossom, both in session and on social networking groups. They’re all so fresh-faced and have so many new persepctives and talents to bring on board the MRD ship.

What would you say to people thinking about getting involved that might not be too sure?

Come and give it a go! It may be scary, starting anything new is scary. But it’s also exciting and odds are, you’ll be hooked by the second week.  Anyone concerned about the physical contact aspects of the game should be reminded that we also need refs and non-skating officials who are imperative in this sport!

Any other aspects to the training role that deserve a mention?

On the other end of the scale, I have also really enjoyed coaching Checker Broads (MRD’s travel team) of which I am a part.  It’s a bit strange coming directly from teaching the Heroes and then jumping into the thick of it with highly intensive drills and tactics. After a bit of a losing streak for MRD, it was my goal to bring us back to the top of our game; teaching urgency, fancy footwork and killer tactics to go out there and dominate the track on bout-day…. and with two glorious wins under our belt in the month of March, I think we’re on to something!

Vic Tori Bee jamming at Malice in Wonderland vs Liverpool Roller Birds in March '12
(copyright Shirlaine Forrest)

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If you want to see the results of the Zero to Hero programme in action, come along and watch MRD's next home bout on Saturday 21st April. This will be MRD's Phoenix Furies first bout as a team and will feature three skaters who have come through the Z2H programme this year. The Checker Broads will also be bouting, in a return game against Dundee Roller Girls. Tickets here, more info here. 

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours...

In my team I am known as "Sui Super Schmoozer" and there are a good few reasons for this.

MRD's Checker Broads in Liverpool, photo copyright Shirlaine Forrest

When I first came on the derby scene in late 2008 there were only a handful of teams in the UK.  From the start I saw myself as an easy-going, relatively sociable sort of roller girl who loved meeting people and hearing their roller derby stories, dreams and goals.

Mixed scrim with Newcastle Roller Girls and Middlesbrough Milk Rollers.

I was lucky to be part of a team then who enjoyed trips to watch other teams bout and were heavily involved in the “fun” side of derby, which of course included staying on at afterparties as often as we could! We travelled all over the country - playing, watching and learning from the other up-and-coming teams from around the UK.

I would go to as many mixed scrimmages as I could and was lucky enough to guest skate for a few mixed teams in the early days. In recent days my derby has even taken me to Sweden where I captained a team for a “UK Invades” bout in Malmö.  I also helped put a team together to take on the mighty Team Scotland before they embarked on the roller derby world cup in Toronto and scored that all important point against the USA!

UK Invades Sweden with skaters from Crime City Roller Girls, Manchester Roller Derby, London Roller Girls, Auld Reekie Roller Girls, Sheffield Steel Roller Girls and Fair City Roller Girls.

My biggest achievement so far is co-founding the wonderful MRD. To work on the PR for this new league I've concentrated on what is now known as my schmoozing (which involves welcoming new skaters and guests that visit us, amongst other things). We have an open door policy with the bi-monthly co-ed scrimmages that we host and make sure we are welcoming to all.

I travelled to the US recently and had an opportunity to watch the New York Shock Exchange, who were awesome. I was brave enough to go and introduce myself to their captain, Jonathan Rockey, and the next day was sat on a bench at Gotham’s training hall watching them train. If only I had taken my skates with me!

Ooh, I nearly forgot! Bootcamps! Having been to three or four and I can confidently say they are invaluable… sometimes expensive, but worth it.  Top-class coaching from some of the best skaters in the world, meeting and playing against skaters with varying skill levels and some pretty amazing parties afterwards to help you dance the aches away.

Grange Hell was the UK's first bootcamp, hosted by Central City Roller Girls. There were probably representatives from every league in existence in the UK at that time. 

I had never taught anyone before being involved in roller derby but found myself teaching a room full of eager new skaters early on at MRD and within 6 months we had our first bouting team.  When I realised I could actually teach useful skills I offered myself out to other new teams when they needed help and have coached the likes of Preston Roller Girls, Chesterfield Roller Derby and The Bruising Banditas of Halifax. I am more than happy to add more teams to this list ;)

Basically what I am saying is, it’s nice to be nice. Get your face out there and help where you can. Support local roller derby. Buy tickets for bouts near you and get a car full of people to go and watch other teams play. You get to meet people and it’s also a great way to learn the game.

Most times when I go and watch a game I don’t care who wins, I just enjoy the sport and lap up the atmosphere. When someone does something good or racks up the points then of course I’ll cheer, but never boo another team or skater no matter what. That isn’t what the sport is for and it certainly doesn’t make you look cool.

As I've said before, it’s nice to be nice, that’s what it’s all about.

Sui-cider #7

The MRD FER IT ferrit :)

Dr. Sausage: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love The Line-Up

I have done Line-up for one game, our team won. I have no real idea how anyone else does line-ups. Thus, I have a 100% success rate and am completely justified in writing this little post.

This isn't a post about how to do be the best Line-up, this is a post about how I did the job given almost no experience and less than a week of notice. Hopefully it'll be of use to anyone doing Line-up for the first time. The below method would not have been possible without assistance and notes from Don Gingovanni.

“Don't worry, I got this.”

You don't have skates on, nobody sees your face, you don't watch the game and you have no idea what's happening on track. If you do your job perfectly, nobody notices you're there. After the game when you've done a good job, you feel immensely satisfied. Welcome to the wonderful world of counting to five under pressure.

Your job is to get a jammer and four blockers on the track when the jam start whistle blows. That's it. If anyone says you “have” to do anything else, they're making things too complicated.

I thought I had to do all sorts: field a perfectly balanced pack, keep track of who’s tired, check for penalties, ask who hasn't skated enough, pick the pivot, be firm and authoritarian, make sure people only skate with people they work best with etc. These are not essential. Important, perhaps, but certainly not vital.

People gave me a lot of advice at first, a lot of things to keep track of and think about. There was no way in hell I have enough brain capacity to fit most of what I was told in, so I prioritised. This is the only important skill you need as a Line-up.

You get a limited, and variable, amount of time in order to make your lines, so do the most important things first then work your way down a list of nice extras until you reach the bottom and have a perfect pack, or until the four whistles blow and you send your line on to the track.

For me, the order of priority went as follows:

1. Pick a jammer
2. Pick an assist
3. Pick three blockers
4. Give one of the blockers the pivot panty
5. Tell one blocker to stay sat down if we have somebody in the bin
6. Stand back, count how many people are sat down
7. Ask: Is this a strong pack? If not, can I swap people around?


Steps 1 through 3 need to be done fast, so I built a basic table to help me. There are four columns, ordered as such: Jammer (I did note how often each jammer wanted to jam, but never once used this info), Assist, Pivot and Wall. Under each heading is a list of names of people good for this role, and in approximate order of ability.

This makes it easy to get your line-up rocking. Just get a little from column A, a dash of column B, then pick three from everyone else, and hand somebody the pivot panty.

Top tip: If somebody has been held back or swapped out of a line, give them the party hat (pivot panty). It stops their potential feelings of “naww, I was left behind”, and also stems your guilt for the aforementioned potential sadness.

Some people like to have pre-made line-ups. Personally, I can't imagine anything worse than having 30 seconds to cross reference who is sat down and ready to skate with a massive list of pre-made line-ups. My brain ain't playing that game. Re-making a fresh line every time is faster, and makes reacting to changing situations a non-issue.

Saying that, I had a few line-ups pre-made, but these were only for special occasions. I had the first three line-ups of the game written down (which I repeated at the start of the second half). This takes the initial pressure off me, lets me make sure we have a strong start, and everyone skates at least once in the first few jams.

I also had some “power line-ups” written down. I had two for when we get a power jam, and two for when they get a power jam. This is the only thing I'll be changing for next time; don't bother with pre-made power line-ups listing P, B2, B3, B4. Just have a list of 6 power-blockers for our power jam, and 6 for them. You're just making mini versions of the table I described above for these special occasions.

And that's everything I had written down when I turned up.

“How are you feeling?”

As the game goes on you're going to want to do a few things. These are the non-essential extras to do when you're on top of the rest.

Aim to be two jams ahead with your planning. Most of the time during the game there were 5 skaters on the track behind me, 5 in front of me, and the remaining few in a row behind them. When the whistles go the first row move to the track, the rear few move to the front and I plug up the gaps with skaters coming off the track. The front row are your immediate priority, but that second row can be given your attention if you've sorted your next line-up.

Chat to the Bench to see if any skaters are going to have their roles changed. I started the game with 7 people on the list of jammers, and I ended the game with 4. Just cross people off your list if they're not on form or injured. If you have some blockers being awesome be sure you're listing them as Assists.

Penalties should have an eye kept on them. Be sure you know how they're being noted on the inside whiteboard. Keep a list of numbers and names in front of you and just mark when people are on 3 minors or 6 majors. Don't field more than one blocker on 3 minors if you can help it, and definitely don't field a jammer on 3 minors. Poodle jammers on 3 if you have to, and only if there's nobody in the bin.

One other thing with the penalty box; if you see two blockers in there be sure to tell a second blocker on the next line-up “If there's two people in the bin, you sit out”. If there's going to be confusion about who the pivot is, or if the pivot is in the bin, just don't field a pivot.

Before the game make sure your skaters know to tell you if they're getting tired, or injured, or loosing their mojo, and need to sit out for one or two. Always say yes if a skater needs a break. If you've backed yourself into a corner and have to jam a tired skater (for example you only have two jammers off the track, and both are tired), then it's up to you to help them by fielding power blockers to make things easier.

And that's it. Obviously you can tailor and add to your priorities as you like, but that's really the key; know what's important. Make your list, check it twice, and have fun.

Oh also, have a really awesome team. That's kind of a big deal too.

You will get to see me doing line-ups for the MRD Checker Broads at our next home bout on April 21st at the Armitage Centre, Fallowfield, Manchester. Get your tickets online here now.

Photo Copyright Shirlaine Forrest 2012 www.shirlainephotos.co.uk

Why I am keeping my derby name

I’m not even meant to have a derby name yet. I haven’t quite passed Minimum Skills, so it’s only a provisional name. Technically, I have no right to write this post.

However, I am going to, because I’m never going to skate under my own name, and here’s why.

Throughout my 30+ years on this planet, I have had a chequered relationship with sports and exercise. As a child, I was un-co-ordinated, weak and always small for my age. School PE was hell, and I vowed I would never do sport again. Until I got to university, and got into football. Although I trained hard, I always lagged behind the others in skill. The other girls I played with were friendly, don’t get me wrong, but I was tolerated as a team member rather than embraced as a team-mate. Casual five-a-side football was easier and more fun, but that petered out.

Back at university, I decided to take the plunge with sports again, and trained in capoeira for a year and a half. The other members of the group were encouraging, and I made progress, but again, I seemed to fall behind very easily, and never mastered a couple of the basic skills. This was despite what I now know to be excessive amounts of hard training. It was during this time that a few drastic things happened to me, health-wise, which involved massive weight loss. I had to stop training completely, and took it easy physically for the best part of a year. It turned out that I had a dodgy thyroid gland, which was treatable with medication.

Okay, you can put your violin away now. This isn’t a sob story. And here’s what it has to do with my derby name.

Back to my healthy weight, and curious, I was accepted by MRD as a beginner. It has been hard work, and I’m not there yet, but all of a sudden, I’ve found that I have, for the first time in my life, the physical reactions of a normal person. I try a move a few times, and it gets easier. I make a mistake and fall on my bum, but I can get up and avoid the situation next time. I skate laps, and gradually, my total is creeping towards the magic 25 in 5. I cannot describe how satisfying that is, after a life of lethargy, poor muscle tone and non-existent muscle memory.

This is why I will always skate as Sonia Boom. Sonia can do these things, and will do so much more. Sonia has even started leaking into my working life. If a student is playing up, Sonia has been known to fly in to the rescue. If I find myself in trouble with others, Sonia can step in.

Sonia is not bothered by her misfiring thyroid, or by what others thought of Rachel all those years ago.

Rachel + MRD = Sonia. Go Sonia!

Happy New Year from MRD!

I can't believe it's 2012 already and MRD is into its third calendar year. We've been pretty busy since our last post with another two bouts under our belts for the Check'er Broads (away against Severn Roller Torrent and home against Croydon Roller Derby). Our men's team, New Wheeled Order, played their first full home bout against Tyne and Fear at Mistletoe and Grime and showed just how far they've come. We now have a second women's team, the Phoenix Furies, who will be debuting soon - watch this space! If this wasn't exciting enough, 2012 is shaping up to be a busy year with the Check'er Broads' first bout of the year less than a month away.

2011 has been such an exciting year for us at MRD. Personally I realised my dream of playing roller derby in Manchester in front of friends and family and have enjoyed every second on the track with with my team mates immensely. I'm seeing plenty of updates on Facebook, Twitter and the like from newer members of MRD who have been well and truly bitten by the derby bug and who have brought new and exciting ideas to the table as well as seeing just how much this league means to those who've worked tirelessly since its inception in 2010 to make it into the wonderful creature it now is.

We've got plans for our new intakes as well as we find ourselves in high demand and it's lovely to see so many teams blossoming all over the world as derby takes hold. There was a sterling representation from MRD on the online chat whilst the first Roller Derby World Cup was being streamed and the enthusiasm our members have never ceases to amaze me.

Now we're in the very futuristic-sounding 2012 (where's my hoverboard?) with new skaters, much bouting fun and a new website ahead, we're all making plans to improve ourselves and strengthen our teams so watch out world!

I will leave you with one of my favourite photos of the year, taken by our wonderful photographer, Shirlaine Forrest.

Copyright Shirlaine Forrest 2011

Wishing you all a very happy, bashy 2012!

- Nyte Owl

Move on up

MRD have been skating a long and bumpy road lately. It's not cool to moan, but as any fledgling team, group or organisation will know, often the way that things begin is not the way they can continue.  Sometimes introducing any sort of change can be the biggest challenge of all.

Bearing this in mind there has been a LOT of change in the MRD camp this year. As the club began to grow the members of MRD expressed a desire for decision-making to be more democratic and fair. We ran polls, allowing people to nominate themselves for project manager positions within the club (e.g. Treasurer, PR, Bouts manager... to name but a few) and we also voted in an overall president of the club.

We recently voted on whether we should move training venues, from The Arcadia in Levenshulme to The Sporting Edge in Openshaw. It was a difficult decision as the club was founded at The Arcadia, but 87% of the votes were in favour of the move and it meant we could have our own space in an already fully-functional environment whilst remaining centrally located. So we're now settling into our new venue!

We remain as inclusive as we have always been but we are currently putting in place ways to make skating with MRD safer, fairer and more encouraging for skaters both new and old. Setting up a junior roller derby club requires skaters and coaches to be safeguarded, whatever their age. This is something we're looking to set up with help from the owners of Sporting Edge. We're also fine-tuning our training sessions to make sure they fully cater to the needs of all ability levels - there'll be an announcement soon about our next run of the Mega Heroes 12-week course for new skaters.

Our future bouts have now been planned up until the end of 2012, meaning we will soon have an actual bouts calendar for everyone to plan their weekends around :P On top of all this and more, we are trying to get a brand spanking new website designed and up and running! The current website was knocked up in under two weeks to promote our first bout Wonderbrawl and has been long overdue a re-design. We now also have a fantastic sponsor in the form of Extreme Largeness and an official team photographer in the ever lovely Shirlaine Forrest. So much work is going on behind the scenes it is unreal!

The main aim of all this hard work is for us to be more organised, fairer and stronger than ever before - and although it has been a tough road so far I reckon we can pull it off. We *are* MRD after all.

Derby love to you all - it's our love of this mad sport that keeps us trying to make MRD the best it can be.
- Kate Push

"Action and reaction, ebb and flow, trial and error, change - this is the rhythm of living. Out of our over-confidence, fear; out of our fear, clearer vision, fresh hope. And out of hope, progress." - Bruce Barton

Copyright - Shirlaine Forrest