#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!

#ThrowbackThursday: Home Teams Season 1!

You're in for a treat this weekend: we're holding our first home teams games of the season on Saturday and you're all invited! The T-Wrecks will be lining up to face the Death Stars and the Bad Omens to see just what they can do with those tiny little arms against lightsabers and witchcraft. Tickets are £6 in advance from here or £8 on the door.

As we prepare to open our 2016 Home Teams season I thought it'd be a good time to look back to five years ago when it all began. At that time we had the Irn Bruisers and the Maiden Grrders and we did play some intraleague games too, but late in 2010 an idea formed; we wanted to have a public tournament to showcase our skills and get a little bit of competition going within the league.

There were three teams to begin with: Bad Omens, Death Stars and Hell's Belles. The Tyrannosaurus Wrecks first featured in the 2013 Home Teams season (it takes significantly longer to reanimate a dinosaur than it does to attract the attention of The Empire or to summon demons and witches apparently).

GRD's Bad Omens, Death Stars, Hell's Belles and Tyrannosaurus Wrecks - which one is your favourite?

The first Home Teams season began on 19 February 2011, and the final was contested on May 7th. This saw the Death Stars facing up to the Bad Omens - they had both beaten the Hell's Belles and seemed evenly matched. It was difficult to predict whether the malevolent Sith powers would prove a match for some older women standing round a cauldron chanting about toil and trouble!

The poster for the first Home Teams Final, between the Death Stars and the Bad Omens, featuring Jess E Ska & Cara VIola.

In the end the Dark Side was defeated and the misunderstood women took the win home in their oversized cooking pot to their cats: Death Stars 87 - 162 Bad Omens.

But that's only part of the story - it remains to be decided who won the skateouts! Check out the video below. Yes, there's a choir. Yes, a certain Sith lord and his henchmen make an appearance. Yes, it is absolutely brilliant! Come along on Saturday for more silliness and roller derby, and if you want to show your support for your favourite team then there's a discount in our online store until the end of the month on home teams merch: use the code GRDHOMETEAMS at the checkout. Pick up something else nice for yourself while you're in there!

#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.