Ah, Roller Derby. In many ways it comes across as an exploitation sport. Women in skimpy shorts and fishnets, with tattoos and trashy, geektastic call names. It’s sexy atheletism for the DIY punkster crowd, but much like any independent circus show, bodies and the contradiction of conventional beauty reign. Rather than being exploitative, the sport shows that women can be tough, independent, and defiant. And, yes, even sexy, in many different shapes and sizes. We, the audience, go for the potential of aggression (like any competitive sport) and satisfying goth/rockabilly costuming. We stay for the fun, free-spirited control of chaos.

For the layman, Roller Derby is a sport with women on roller skates trying to a) earn points by lapping the other team while b) trying to prevent the other team from earning points. There’s more too it than that, but the strict details of fouls and such aren’t adequately explained over the distributed jumble of words from the speaker system, so really, make up your own rules from the benches. Or behind the suicide line if you don’t mind a derby girl falling on you.

Every woman who gets a glimpse of derby contemplates joining the next Fresh Meat intake, as derby is an open sport as long as you can commit the hours. Many of us, however, only get as far as hypothesising what our derby names should be. It’s almost a Rite of Passage in our modern world. We’ll look back in 15 years time as comedians make lame retro jokes and we’ll sigh with nostalgia.

It’s the VRDL Grand Final on the weekend. They’ve bumped up to a larger venue of 3000 and it looks set to sell out. For a player-run league only a few years old, that’s not bad at all.

If you see Moldy Locks, come say hi. GO TOXICS!!