Bear Grylled’s Derby Dream

If you’ve been tuning in this week, you know Bear Grylled’s take on men in derby. Here’s what he said when I asked him about his opinions on derby in general.

I am extremely excited about the future of the sport in Australia and in Adelaide. I recently watched Tricksey Belt’em play for Team Australia at the 2011 World Cup in Canada (where we finished a proud 4th) I watched the first two games against Germany and Finland LIVE! I was expecting us to get hammered by the big Germans, but we seemed to out-jam, out manoeuvre and out play them and won by a wide margin. In subsequent bouts against Finland, Sweden and Scotland we increased our dominance and only got stopped by the amazing Team America. Even against the English in the 3v4 playoff we did a good job, but showed we still have work to do. It has shown the world that Australia knows what we are doing in the sport. It is with a great deal of pride that we can say we are number four in the world and that our own Adelaidie Tricksey was one of them.

Photo by Jules Doyle

In Adelaide now there are five leagues in different stages of development and catering to different needs and regions, and I can only see that getting better and bigger (there is no league in the south of Adelaide at present). My own league, Murder City Roller Girls, is a whisker away from full public bouting and next year will see our first interstate trip against another league and then a team entered into the Great Southern Slam, where we and I as a ref wannabe will learn so much more! Eventually Adelaide will get to the stage that the leagues will all be able to bout against each other and maybe play in an Adelaide Cup tourney, who knows. The leagues will just have to continue working more closely together to achieve that goal!

My league has a new intake in January 2012 which will breathe new life into the league, fresh faces and welcome new members into the derby family, and some of our current referees will go on to fulfil their dreams of becoming roller girls. That is what this is all about, that one moment when you can say I really want to do it and then go on and achieve that goal. My goal always has been to become a good and fair referee and be respected by my league and peers, and my family. I would like to do a WFTDA training course to help me along on my journey so I can better support my friends in the league.

Mostly I am excited about where our league can get to and where we might be in 12 months from now. I have a lot of respect for the authors of this blog and have been extremely honoured by Eve Yllanside in being asked to contribute, and I thank her extremely for that opportunity! Good luck with all the readers’ roller derby adventures and I hope you will all come along when Murder City hold our first open public bouts and support the sport that we all have embraced with such passion in our own ways!

Thank you so much to Bear for his considered and open responses – but most of all for doing all the thinking for me this week!

Posted in: LimboLand