#ThrowbackThursday: A Little Bit ARRGmazing

This Saturday, our Irn Bruisers will be heading out east to face up to the Auld Reekie Roller Girls' All Stars as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in a celebration of some of the best of Scottish roller derby. Also playing will be the ARRG All Star Rookies who will be taking on Dundee Roller Girls' Bonnie Colliders. For more information and to buy tickets, go here.

With that in mind, I decided to go for another expedition into the depths of the internet to see what happened the first time Glasgow Roller Girls met ARRG on the flat track in public! A little over seven years ago,  an idea was hatched to showcase Europe's roller derby talents in a tournament and thus Roll Britannia! was born. Hosted by London Roller Girls on the weekend of 18-19 July 2009 at Brompton Hall, Earls Court, it featured twelve teams from across the UK as well as Berlin and Stuttgart. Two of those teams, who faced up to each other for third place, were GRG's Irn Bruisers and ARRG's Twisted Thistles.

And while 2009 might seem like a quite a while ago in roller derby career terms, there were some people playing who you can still see on track on Saturday: Sarah McMillan from GRG, Crazylegs from ARRG and Haberbashery who is now a GRD regular but started out in ARRG green.

Haberbashery, back in her ARRG days.

Photo courtesy of Neal Humphris nealhumphris.co.uk/
facebook.com/londonphoto

On the day, Glasgow Roller GIrls were victorious and took third place with a score of 120-70 over ARRG. This took GRG to third place behind London Rollergirls and Birmingham Blitz Dames. For roller derby stats geeks and to see how everyone else got on, here are all the results from the tournament.

Were you there? Maybe as a player? Perhaps a spectator? Have you got any better pictures?! Let us know by posting them in the comments!

Stefanie Mainey bootcamp

This weekend we had the absolute honour of hosting Stefanie Mainey of London Rollegirls for an intermediate skills bootcamp. 

In five very intense hours, a group of skaters from leagues far and wide learned how to be a more solid blocker, nippier jammer and all-round more awesome person to be with on a roller derby track.  

Tired but happy skaters after a fab session with Stef Mainey. 

Thanks to everyone who came along and worked so hard, to all those who arranged the event and above all, to Stef Mainey for imparting some of her roller derby skills and knowledge to us! 

If you want to check out some of what our league members learned, we'll be heading off to Manchester on June 11 to play Tiger Bay Brawlers and Rainy City Roller Derby. Or, if you fancy something closer to home, the first home teams game of the year is coming up on June 18! 

#ThrowbackThursday : Riots Of Spring

The sport of roller derby is constantly evolving - from its start in the roller marathons of the 1880s, to a more recognisable contact sport on roller skates in the 1930s, to the game we play today. The WFTDA rules set is constantly updated to improve the game (and to give me the fear every time our annual rules test comes round, I suspect). Even the language we use has changed: they're not bouts any more, we play games and we're no longer the Glasgow Roller Girls, we're Glasgow Roller Derby.

It occurred to me that it would be good to have a look back through GRD's past, and for my first in this series of nostalgic posts I've jumped way back to a time of themed bouts, fishnets and mini-kilts: GRG's first ever bout on March 29 2008.

The poster for the Riots of Spring bout between London Rollergirls and Glasgow Roller Girls, 29 March 2008.

At that time, we were a one-team league and the Irn Bruisers made the long trip down south to face up to London Brawling. It was a tough game against a more experienced side and ended in defeat for the Bruisers (featuring some guest skaters from Birmingham Blitz Dames, Central City Rollergirls and London Roller Girls) with a final score of 163-31 to Brawling. While it wasn't a happy ending, I'm sure it was a great learning experience and I love that LRG's bout report includes comment on the band, Earl Grey & The Tea Ladies, who played at half time!

Something else which has changed: these days we just give awards to the Best Jammer, Best Blocker and MVP but back in the day we also celebrated Penalty Queen (it really is what it sounds like!) - Bette Noir for LRG and Jaci Dodger for GRG.

This is to be the first in an ongoing series of blog posts on GRD history - I've only just started digging and have struck gold with some absolutely brilliant old photos, videos and posters - so keep checking back for more!

If future events are more your thing, check out our Events Page to see what's coming up.