Our game against Inverness City Roller Derby is less than a week away for us at NTRG and we’re eager to share our thoughts on it with you! 4 of our skating team have answered what they are most looking forward to; what they’ve been doing outside of training to prep for the game and who they think will win! Storm in a D Cup, Millie Manslaughter, Mother Tucker and Hazzard are here to share their pre game insights with you all!

Storm in a D Cup 69

The thing I am looking forward to most about game day is that feeling of team comraderie. The sick, excited and nervous butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling as we all pile into the bus or car. How we will all send a million messages to our team mates sharing experiences, offering support and motivation.  I am not someone who has ever been involved in sport. I now look back with a bit of regret that I did not do something like this when I was younger. I feel grateful for finding something that I am proud of, for finding all these amazing women who are completely different, but for one day the same. We are all trying our best to succeed, support and survive.

Time is my biggest challenge in most things. Full time work, family and trying to maintain a reasonable quality of life leaves me spread a bit thin. When it comes preparing for an upcoming game I find I absorb myself in You Tube videos for hints and tips, watch games on my phone during my commute, and practise in the kitchen while doing laundry and the dishes. I am lucky that my kids love skating, helping them and playing skatey games not only improves my skills but keeps me calm, it always reminds me that I am doing this for fun.

The one thing I have discovered is that it’s not important who wins. After past games it is the last thing we talk about. We laugh and joke, while comparing bumps and bruises. We learn and grow from our experience playing with other teams. We become better players. I know we all will try our best, and if we lose we will still hold our heads high and celebrate with the victors without fear of being judged as inferior.  Just as I know we won’t judge them….when we kick their butts!

Millie Manslaughter 5

I am looking forward to seeing how well the team comes together because we have been working and training hard so it will be great to see if our hard work has payed off or not. It will also be nice for the team to spend some time together.

I have recently bought a pushbike. I’m loving going out , having the wind in my face and the freedom of just pedalling with no end goal. I have also started doing the 5k parkrun on a saturday morning. It's so much more fun than a treadmill.

Mentally I made myself a list of goals for this game at the beginning of march and I think about them each training. I have also been watching more derby online so that I canlearn more and improve my gameplay.

I'm not sure who will win but I can predict it will be exciting!!

Watch out Inverness, Millie Manslaughter's coming for you!! 😀😀

whoarewe #NTRG

Mother Tucker 79

The pre-match build up: Skating out with the team before the game - it’s great to go out and hear everyone cheering your team.  When your name’s announced, you feel all special for a moment or two, then you cheer all the other team members! Also, huddling round just and doing our chant is pretty awesome.

I try not to overthink games!  From a physical training point of view, I went along to a GMRD session recently which was a real eye-opener.  Their level of gameplay is so fast and tactical and I learned so much in just a couple of hours. I followed that up by playing in an ARRG event last week which was brilliant.  It gave me a chance to practice some of the things we’ve been working on at our team training sessions and I played really well and came out of it feeling amazing!

I think it’ll be a good game to watch and if we can communicate well and put into practice what we’ve been focusing on at training, then I reckon NTRG will win!

Hazzard 810

I’m very much looking forward to playing with the team! It’s the first time we’ve been able to train for and play games consistently within a short period of time and it’s a great bonding experience not just for the skating team but for the entire league as well! We have a host of supporters coming up for Inverness so it’s gonna be NTRG tastic!

I’ve been hitting the gym a lot lately as I have some personal derby goals that I’m wanting to achieve which require me to up both my mental and physical derby game. For the mental side I’ve been watching tons of games online and just drilling derby in to my head even more so than it already is! It’s definitely helping me reach new derby heights and as Inverness is now just round the corner I’m eager to see if all the hard work has been paying off!

I hope that it’s us but I think it’s going to be closely matched either way! We seem very similar to ICRD in the array of experience in our skating teams and that’s bound to make for a super exciting game between us!

- Inverness City Roller Derby host New Town Roller Girls as the first bout in their double header 21st April 2018. (The second bout sees Team EPIC play Team Black.) Doors open at 12:30.