Since our first article on Short Track Roller Derby, back in 2018, the new ruleset has continued to spread, in almost all the places in the world where Roller Derby is played. As such, we thought we’d follow up, just 4 months later, with some of the exciting developments in Short Track worldwide.

Firstly, as readers of What A Bout magazine will already know, Short Track Roller Derby has spread further-and-wider than we could have hoped: to Russia, and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, already. You should read the full article in WAB Issue 3 for full details, but look out for several Short Track tournaments in Moscow, and other Russian cities later in the year. Dubai’s interest in Short Track has also led to bigger things which we’ll get to later in this article.

Short Track is continuing to enable more teams to play derby, even now.

In Poland, Gdańsk’s Chrome Sirens are playing their first ever public game, thanks to Short Track rules enabling them to put together two competitive teams (and use more accessible venues). This double-header event will be coming to the city in the middle of next month - March 16th!

In the Americas, Short Track Derby is also taking off: ruleset creators Rolla Skate Club having provided initial impetus with a comprehensive series of trial sessions across Canada and the North-west of the USA. In Latin America, meanwhile, there is interest in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in exploring the ruleset, as it solves several of the challenges of the many teams in the city.

Illinois Valley Vixens Roller Derby during their first public bout under Short Track Rules.(Photo used by permission of Dave Schrader under license. [not covered by site CC license] )

In the USA, though, public bouts have already started, with the ruleset enabling teams to play their first games in years!

For Illinois Valley Vixens Roller Derby, who played their first public bout for 3 years thanks to Short Track back in February, the ruleset has been a revelation. Whilst some venue issues meant that they had to modify the track slightly, the bout was a complete success - despite only using word of mouth and social media for advertising, they managed to fill all the available seating. Speaking for the league, Lemon Squeezer told us : “We now know that a smaller track definitely does not mean less exciting or intense, quite the opposite! I can't remember a time I have heard a crowd this engaged before and the feedback from spectators was that they are looking forward to the next one and bringing friends. We also had several former skaters come to check it out that are now interested in coming back.”. I.M.GROOT added, “The fact that all players have to both jam and block really takes you out of your comfort zone. It pushes you to use all the skills you have learned, not just the ones you prefer. Short Track has the ability to really push skaters to be stronger, better and more adaptable in game play.”

In an even more striking mode, the USA has also brought us the first ever “Short Track” league: Pittsburgh Short Track Roller Derby, founded by a group of skaters who retired from “competitive” Roller Derby, but still wanted to play a friendlier version of the sport. Their league aim, as expressed on their website and Facebook page, “We are a group of friends who wanted to create a safe, stress free environment to get together and skate. Community over competition.” encapsulates the entire point of Short Track as a ruleset and community. (You can find out more about them on social media and their website.)

Further in the future, there’s also exciting news of potentially the first ever international Short Track Roller Derby Tournament.  The newly created UAE All-Stars, the United Arab Emirates’ official travel team, are exploding onto the scene, and one of their first public plans is to play Short Track Derby! Formed of skaters from Dubai Roller Derby and Abu Dhabi Roller Derby, the team plan to play all kinds of Derby, but Short Track is definitely a solid component of their goals. [We have more about UAE All-Stars themselves in another new article here, which we’re going to publish soon - and their first ever public game will be this weekend, 2nd March, in Hong Kong, as part of the Pan-Asian Spring Rollers].

UAE Roller Derby All-Stars practising on the Short Track [courtesy of UAE All-Stars]

Thanks to the support of GO-GO Gent Roller Derby, who had been investigating hosting an experimental Short Track clinic for several months, UAE All-Stars will be travelling to Belgium on the 1st and 2nd of June. The first day will be a Short Track Roller Derby training workshop, allowing the experienced skaters from Dubai’s testing of the rules (and potentially other skaters who’ve tried Short Track from the rest of Europe) to explain and demonstrate the potential of the ruleset to attendees.   The second day will be a tournament event: the structure of which is still under development. Teams are welcome to participate from across Europe, and we know that there’s been interest from several regions already.

Even further in the future, there’s the possibility of Short Track bootcamps in other parts of Europe, including the UK, and other plans afoot about which we can’t speak at this time. Stay tuned for further updates as they occur!

Previously on this blog, we've written about Waterford ViQueens' innovative use of the PivotStar rules to hold a fast, efficient and fun Roller Derby tournament in the south of Ireland: LINK. After the success of the initial tournament, where 6 teams from across Ireland (and also a single team from France) competed in a faster-paced event, Waterford are doing it again.

Victory or Vahalla #2 will be a WFTDA-gender policy tournament held in Waterford on the 27th April, aimed at teams from around FTS Women's Europe"> rating 400 to 500.

This tournament will be played under PivotStar rules, a variant ruleset developed to allow efficient production of tournaments with less load on officials. This shouldn't put anyone off - the main things that change are: skaters score 1 point per pass (not 1 per skater), there are no runbacks (track cuts and returns are relative to where you left the track, not relative position of skaters), and games are 20 minutes long with no timeouts. This makes for a fun tournament event, with slightly faster play and different tactics than a WFTDA-standard bout.

This will be the first of several planned "non-standard rules" tournaments in Europe this year (there's at least two in Russia coming up, as well as one or two currently in planning), so we advise people to get in on the fun and not miss out.

Waterford is accessible for international travellers from the airports at Cork Shannon and Dublin, as well from the ferry terminal at Rosslare (for people travelling from Wales or France).

Teams can sign up via Google Forms here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScCs5srTnpBrSqkZpT_S8Ndnd5OLFJI9txHUXQruBMezWbSxQ/viewform

It's a new season for WFTDA competition, and with it we've had the first new official WFTDA rating for the season ( https://wftda.com/rankings-january-31-2019/) Throughout the year, however, those ratings and rankings will change - not just as the teams play more games, but also because the weighting of their past games will alter. Games will "age out" of the rating if they become more than 1 year old; and games which become more than 6 months old will count only 50% as much.

All the locations with teams in our top 100 (larger stars mean more than one team is in the list - for example, 2x4 and Sailor City in Buenos Aires).

Speedy Convalesce, Head NSO of Mannheim's Delta Quads, as well as many other things, is here to help us better visualise what's likely to happen at Playoff selection, however. This ongoing series will report the ratings and rankings of the top 100 WFTDA teams, calculated as if we were at June 30th 2019 [the ranking which will be used to decide Qualifications and seedings into both WFTDA Playoffs, and the Continental Cups]. Whilst we can't predict the future, this will give the best guess of what teams need to do to qualify, based on what they've already done.

As well as attaining a minimum ranking, teams also need to play at least 4 bouts within the eligibility period (December 2018 to June 2019), and we'll be tracking their progress on this measure, too.

The list: (# is number of bouts contributing to the ranking, whilst #El is the number of bouts contributing to their eligibility for playoffs). We'll colour teams to indicate when they've played their minimum number of games for eligibility, but as yet, it's too early for anyone to have met this. We've eliminated any teams which have played less than 2 games since July 2018 here.

Rk.	Team	Region	#	Points	#El
1	Rose City Rollers	N A WEST	6	1277.69	0
2	Victorian Roller Derby League	ASIA PACIFIC	5	1274.92	0
3	Gotham Girls Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	1193.05	0
4	Denver Roller Derby	N A WEST	5	1187.67	0
5	Arch Rival Roller Derby	N A EAST	7	1135.02	0
6	Angel City Derby	N A WEST	6	1011.88	0
7	London Rollergirls	EUROPE	4	861.02	0
8	Texas Rollergirls	N A WEST	7	858.86	0
9	Crime City Rollers	EUROPE	5	849.52	0
10	Minnesota RollerGirls	N A EAST	3	835.39	0
11	Jacksonville Rollergirls	N A EAST	6	817.81	0
12	Montreal Roller Derby	N A EAST	7	803.01	0
13	2x4 Roller Derby	C/S AMERICA	3	788.7	0
14	Rat City Roller Derby	N A WEST	4	773.87	0
15	Santa Cruz Derby Girls	N A WEST	3	768.38	0
16	Rainy City Roller Derby	EUROPE	3	753.28	0
17	Bay Area Derby	N A WEST	3	753.06	0
18	Atlanta Roller Derby	N A EAST	5	737.36	0
19	Stockholm Roller Derby	EUROPE	2	711.8	0
20	Canberra Roller Derby League	ASIA PACIFIC	3	702.49	0
21	Arizona Roller Derby	N A WEST	3	692.91	0
22	Helsinki Roller Derby	EUROPE	3	667.73	0
23	Ann Arbor Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	657.77	0
24	Queen City Roller Girls	N A EAST	2	599.21	0
25	Tampa Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	554.73	0
26	Charlottesville Derby Dames	N A EAST	3	550.51	0
27	Philly Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	536.23	0
28	Kallio Rolling Rainbow	EUROPE	3	528.37	0
29	Windy City Rollers	N A EAST	2	515.78	0
30	Boston Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	513.5	0
31	Middlesbrough Roller Derby	EUROPE	3	487.92	0
32	Dublin Roller Derby	EUROPE	3	487.69	0
33	Blue Ridge Rollergirls	N A EAST	2	474.81	0
34	Team United Women's Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	471.13	0
35	Calgary Roller Derby	N A WEST	4	458.14	0
36	Detroit Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	455.59	0
37	Bear City Roller Derby	EUROPE	2	451.72	0
38	North Star Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	444.61	0
39	E-Ville Roller Derby	N A WEST	3	439.04	0
40	Sun State Roller Derby	ASIA PACIFIC	3	433.22	0
41	Tiger Bay Brawlers	EUROPE	3	433.05	0
42	Dock City Rollers	EUROPE	3	432.34	0
43	Mad Rollin' Dolls Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	426.87	0
44	Paris Rollergirls	EUROPE	2	415.37	0
45	Birmingham Blitz Dames	EUROPE	2	414.86	0
46	Terminal City Rollergirls	N A WEST	2	405.14	0
47	Orangeville Roller Girls	N A EAST	3	402.54	0
48	Sailor City Rollers	C/S AMERICA	2	386.74	0
49	Sacramento Roller Derby	N A WEST	3	386.55	0
50	Rocky Mountain Rollergirls	N A WEST	3	385.47	0
51	Royal City Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	383.71	0
52	Grand Raggidy Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	381.81	0
53	Tucson Roller Derby	N A WEST	3	366.08	0
54	Happy Valley Derby Darlins	N A WEST	3	364.62	0
55	Ohio Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	361.81	0
56	Central City Rollerderby	EUROPE	3	344.36	0
57	Charm City Roller Girls	N A EAST	3	340.23	0
58	Columbia Quad Squad	N A EAST	3	329.57	0
59	Jet City Roller Derby	N A WEST	3	327.72	0
60	Dub City Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	326.25	0
61	No Coast Derby Girls	N A WEST	3	324.05	0
62	Boulder County Bombers	N A WEST	2	304.96	0
63	Classic City Rollergirls	N A EAST	4	293.23	0
64	Crossroads City Derby	N A WEST	2	289.23	0
65	Red Stick Roller Derby	N A EAST	5	284.38	0
66	Antwerp Roller Derby	EUROPE	4	266.95	0
67	Appalachian Roller Derby	N A EAST	5	266.51	0
68	Ottawa Valley Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	261.22	0
69	Pikes Peak Derby Dames	N A WEST	2	239.75	0
70	Nottingham Hellfire Harlots	EUROPE	2	233.15	0
71	Duke City Derby	N A WEST	3	229.87	0
72	Brewcity Bruisers	N A EAST	2	222.75	0
73	Nantes Derby Girls	EUROPE	2	221.44	1
74	Amsterdam Roller Derby	EUROPE	2	219.09	0
75	Newcastle Roller Girls	EUROPE	2	213.68	0
76	Lehigh Valley Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	206.7	0
77	Black Rose Rollers	N A EAST	2	201.58	0
78	Dark River Derby Coalition	N A EAST	2	200.36	0
79	State College Area Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	197.45	0
80	Chattanooga Roller Girls	N A EAST	4	197.22	0
81	Gold Coast Derby Grrls	N A EAST	2	197.19	0
82	Brussels Derby Pixies	EUROPE	3	185.7	0
83	Penn Jersey Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	185.62	0
84	SoCal Derby	N A WEST	3	184.88	0
85	Big Easy Rollergirls	N A EAST	3	180.17	0
86	Confluence Crush Roller Derby	N A EAST	3	176.81	1
87	Rockin City Rollergirls	N A WEST	4	171.37	0
88	Molly Roger Rollergirls	N A EAST	2	171.19	0
89	Sierra Regional Roller Derby	N A WEST	4	170.97	0
90	Les Quads des Paris	EUROPE	3	165.75	1
91	Zurich City Roller Derby	EUROPE	2	164.5	0
92	Sonoma County Roller Derby	N A WEST	4	157.12	0
93	Panhandle United Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	155.46	0
94	Roller Derby Caen	EUROPE	3	154.35	2
95	Free State Roller Derby	N A EAST	2	153.63	0
96	Bakersfield Diamond Divas	N A WEST	2	148.57	0
97	The Royal Swedish Roller Derby	EUROPE	2	148.52	0
98	Fayetteville Roller Derby	N A EAST	4	145.61	0
99	Reading Derby Girls	N A EAST	2	145.28	0
100	Salisbury Rollergirls	N A EAST	2	142.1	0

[We plan to update this list each time WFTDA release a rating and ranking until Playoffs selections]

As you can see, the re-weighting isn't just a technical thing, it produces real effects, visible at the very top of the table. For now, the focus on "more recent games" helps to push Rose above Victorian in our rating here; but these closely matched teams are likely to jostle a lot as the year progresses.

Editor's note: due to burn-out, and the increasingly obnoxious changes on the Wordpress backend, our end of year feature content has been delayed. We'll be releasing it over the next few weeks as we complete it. This is the first item in this content. We apologise for the delays incurred, and will update you all on the future of SRD when we know what that is.

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With the growth of Roller Derby worldwide, there has also come increasing regional organisation. Since 2010, and especially since the first Roller Derby World Cup in 2011 focussed thoughts on National structures, a number of nations, and nation-like entities, have begun organising various "National Tournaments" within themselves. At SRD, we consider these to be as important as any other large scale tournament - such as WFTDA or MRDA events - especially as they can also be more inclusive than such series due to reduced travel costs and membership requirements.

As such, we'd like to highlight the winners of each such tournament series we're aware of in 2018 - and briefly cover the tournaments themselves. As a historical resource, we also host a summary of all of the winners of the tournaments (and some references for them) here: National Tournaments (2010-)

We'll start with the two largest such events (it's hard to judge which is larger, as they have exchanged places on various metrics year to year):

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UK&Ireland ("British Championships")

British Champs has been running since 2015, and has made various changes to its structure over the years (the most recent to improve inclusion and accessibility). It is structured as a multi-tiered divisional system, with each "skill level" tier divided into one or more geographical "divisions"; teams promote/relegate between tiers between seasons. Since 2016, Champs has officially run parallel tournaments for WFTDA- and MRDA- conforming teams, and has also allowed competition from non-A teams.

In 2018, the WFTDA-side tournament winners, topping Tier 1 convincingly were: Central City Roller Derby (Birmingham), not only winning every game against their opponents, but also achieving a significantly higher points difference than the second spot team, Liverpool. 2018 has been a good year for Birmingham teams, as the city's other team, Birmingham Blitz Dames, also hosted the first ever WFTDA Continental Cup in Europe later in the season.

The MRDA-side tournament  was topped extremely impressively by New Wheeled Order (Manchester M), also delivering a huge points-difference advantage over second place Tyne and Fear. New Wheeled Order have had a very good few years, and we expect even more from them in 2019.

France ("Championnat de France Roller Derby")

The French National tournament series is, like the similarly sized British Champs, organised into Tiers by strength, and also loosely divided into geographical regions. (Unlike British Champs, there is competition across regions within a tier; also unlike BC, the Championnat is run directly as part of the French NGB, the FFRS.) The Championnat de France has Feminin- and Masculin- parallel tournaments; some leagues submit teams to the tournament which differ from their Travel teams, and the relaxed structure of the tournament also allows for "combined" team submissions from cooperating leagues. Unusually, compared to many of the other tournaments listed here, the French Championnat is fitted to the French sporting season (roughly following the European school year), and so starts in the previous winter, and finishes in the early summer each year.

Repeating their victory in 2017, Nothing Toulouse (Roller Derby Toulouse) retained the French Championship this year. They remain one of the few non-WFTDA member leagues to hold a Championship position in their home country.

Undefeated champions since the Championnat started in 2016, Quad Guards (Toulouse M) continued their streak for another year in 2018.

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Whilst the French and British tournaments are the largest, they are not the longest running National tournaments. Next, we're going to cover the longest running tournaments in modern Derby, the four which started in 2012:

Sweden (Swedish Roller Derby Seriespel)

The Swedish National Tournament,  . Like larger tournaments, the Series is split into tiers ("serien"), with the Eliteserien being the top tier. More recently, Elite tier teams have been allowed to differ from the Travel teams for their league. There is only a WFTDA-gender tournament in Sweden, to date.

In 2018, Crime City Rollers (Malmö) retained their Championship title for the third year running, placing them one more victory behind Stockholm's streak of 4 wins (from 2012 to 2015).

Finland (Suomi Cup)

Finland's National Tournament is structured rather like the Swedish version, including the tendency of Elite tier leagues to submit non-Travel team rosters to the tournament. For the first time, in 2019 the Suomi Cup will be open to non-Finnish teams (making it an interesting extension of "National"), as St Petersburg Roller Derby A, the White Night Furies, compete.

For the first time in 2018, Oulu Roller Derby achieved the Championship title, breaking a run of alternating wins by Helsinki and Kallio over the previous 6 years.

[Northern Finland also holds its own tournament - the Pohjola Cup - which started the tradition of welcoming non-Finnish participants in previous years via St Petersburg. So, in some ways, it sets the trend for its higher-profile southern relative.]

Mexico (Torneo Nacional de Roller Derby)

Mexico's National Tournament series has been organised by their national governing body, the Asociación Mexicana de Roller Derby, since it began in 2012. We've covered the leadup to the current season on the blog previously here: Mexican National Tournament article. The series consists of a series of playoffs, selected by rating/ranking in the Mexican league tables (which work using the WFTDA rating scheme), with two divisions. As with many other nations, there are "varonil" and "femenil" parallel tournaments, corresponding to WFTDA- and MRDA- policies.

In 2018, Mexico City Roller Derby retained their title for a three-year streak of victories, despite

In the Varonil side of the tournament, Disorder Roller Derby (Mexico City M) also began a streak, retaining their title from 2017.

Colombia

Whilst Colombia has run a National Tournament since 2012, the series has had a somewhat more complex past than the others in this category, with a couple of restructurings, and a hiatus from 2015 to 2016. In its current form, the Tournament consists of two parallel series - a multi-fixture tournament for Bogotá's many leagues (the "Torneo Distrito"), and a separate one for teams in the rest of Colombia (the "Western Region" tournament), with the top teams from both then competing at the Torneo Nacional finals. (We've written more about the 2018 series here.)

2018's Champions, Bogotá Bone Breakers, also retained the Bogotá title in 2018, as well as continuing a three win streak in the national series (albeit across that 2 year gap).

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Slightly less venerable than the oldest tournaments, but not in the size rank as Britain and France, our next grouping also covers a large geographical area.

Brazil (Brasileirão de Roller Derby)

Brazil's national Championship, the Brasileirão, is a single-fixture event at present, which started as least as long ago as 2013 (there's some evidence it started earlier). Due to the distribution of teams in the country, it's semi-invitational, although the highest rated teams in Brazil always attend. (We've written more about the history of the tournament here.)

2018's Brasileirão winners were Gray City Rebels (São Paulo), retaining the title from 2017 (and resisting Ladies of Helltown's attempts to take back the title from 2016).

Chile (Torneo X / Torneo X-Men)

Chile has one of the youngest National Tournaments in Latin America, with the first Torneo X beginning in 2015. Year on year, it has gained more participants, and has had to change structure multiple times to accommodate this, currently using a playoffs and finals structure. For the first time in 2018, B teams have been allowed to compete, enabling Chile's strongest (and only WFTDA-member) league, Metropolitan Roller Derby, to compete with its Bayonetas. Since 2017, there has also been a MRDA-gender tournament, the Torneo X-Men, run in parallel, and loosely associated with the original WFTDA-gender event. (We've covered an intro to this year's Torneo X earlier on the blog.)

For the first time ever, 2018's winners are a B-team: Bayonetas (Metropolitan B | Santiago), taking a fairly commanding win in the final bout. In the Torneo X-Men, which finished earlier in the year, Terror S-Quad (Santiago M) were victorious for a second time in a row.

Germany (Bundesliga Roller Derby)

The German National Tournament, or Bundesliga, formally started in 2015, as a multi-tier tournament run by the German NGB, Roller Derby Deutschland (RDD). In this form, its history has been tracked by Derbyposition.de since the beginning; the structure is much like the much larger French and British tournaments, but without the need for multiple geographical divisions, due to its smaller number of teams. (There were two previous events which might count as "German National Tournaments", in 2010 and 2013, but they are not part of the modern event.) As with several other National series in nations with very high rated WFTDA-member leagues, those leagues have begun sending "non-Travel teams" to represent them in the tournament.

For the first time in the tournament's history, Dresden Pioneers comprehensively won the Bundesliga Division 1 in 2018.

Australia (Australian National Tournament & Australian Men's Nationals)

Unusually, Australia has not had a formally denoted "National Tournament" for WFTDA leagues (although you could claim that the Great Southern Slam counts, given the scope of its attendance). The Australian Men's Roller Derby organisation, on the other hand, has organised an Australian Men's Nationals since 2015, as a single fixture tournament towards the end of the year. More recently, an unusual "State-teams" style National Tournament has been launched (for the first time in 2018), with WFTDA- and MRDA- gender legs, but we're not sure if this counts as a National tournament in the same sense as the other events in this list.

In 2018, Victoria Men's Roller Derby won the Australian Men's Nationals, having lost it for the first time ever in 2017 (to Tasmania!).

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For our final grouping, we have another eclectic selection of Nations, all united in having run a National series for 3 years or less.

New Zealand (Top 10 Championships)

New Zealand's "Top 10 Championships" have been running since 2016, although information on the second year of their organisation is a little patchy due to website bitrot. In general, the series is a flat round-robin style event, distributed across the year, with no tiering or geographical structure. As far as we are aware, there's only a WFTDA-gender version of the tournament so far.

In 2018, Dead End Derby (Christchurch) won the Top 10 Championships for the first time (ending Wellington's Richter City's streak of 2 years).

Spain (Campeonato Nacional de Roller Derby)

The Spanish National tournament is a single event affair, due to the relatively small number of potential competitors in Spain at present. Organised by the Spanish National Governing body, the single tournament sees the top teams in the country play for victory in a single elimination structure. The event has run since 2016, with an additional MRDA parallel event introduced in 2017.

In 2018, Roller Derby Madrid continued their unbroken win streak since the start of the competition.

Similarly, 2018's winners in the other division were MadRiders (Madrid M), also continuing an unbroken win since last year.

Austria

Austria's National tournament only started in 2017; before then, there was effectively only one sufficiently developed team in the country (Vienna Roller Derby), and so no way to hold such an event. Due to the small number of teams, the Austrian National Championship is a single fixture event; and due to the dearth of MRDA teams, it has only a WFTDA leg.

In 2018, Vienna Roller Derby retained their title from 2017, although competition within the rest of the teams was strong, Vienna have a significant experience advantage in their country.

South Africa (National Derby Fest)

South Africa have held a National Championship event since 2016, although that first event included "home teams" from some of the leagues involved. As South Africa has very few leagues with travel teams, this event is a single fixture which also focuses on developing the sport within the nation. (We've written more about the history of the event here.)

In 2018, Johannesburg's Golden City Rollers retained their win streak since the dawn of the tournament.

Belgium (Roller Derby Belgium National Tournament)

Finally, we come to the newest National tournament in our list: Belgium. The Belgian national tournament, organised by rd.BE, the Belgian NGB, ran for the first time this year, as a year-long series of round-robin fixtures within tiers. (Initial tiers were drawn from FTS Europe ratings.) From the start, the rd.BE event has had a WFTDA- and an MRDA- leg.

Antwerp Roller Derby (One Love Roller Dolls) are the first ever holders of the rd.BE Championship title.

In the MRDA leg, Brussels' Manneken Beasts achieved the first ever Championship.

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Special mention:

Japan (Derby Nights 4x4)

Whilst it's structure is rather different to every other event in this list, we should note that Japan has also had a Tokyo-series first for the first time in 2018. The Derby Nights 4x4 ("DN4x4") series was a multi-fixture event with "womens" and "mens" legs, open to leagues of all affiliations in Japan. (As such, the women's division included both the World Skate/FIRS affiliated Spiral Cats, and all of the WFTDA-affiliated leagues in the Tokyo metropolitan area, from Tokyo Roller Derby to the independent Kamikaze Badass.) This was a unique ruleset, with, we believe, 4 skaters per competing team, and very short period and jam lengths.

In 2018, Neon Roller Monsters (the submitted team from Tokyo Roller Derby) won the women's division. The new-in-2018 team, Tokyo Bar Hoppers, won the men's division (which had only 2 teams this year!).

We're excited to see what happens with this tournament format, and if it expands beyond the Tokyo region to the rest of Japan.

We’re bringing you another roundup of the upcoming Roller Derby this weekend from across the world. As always, we’re using Flat Track Stats for much of this information – for regions with less good coverage, we also do a bit of intensive searching using a tool which scans the Facebook events of Roller Derby leagues known to Derby Listing.

Predictions of bouts are from FTS, if possible, and from our own SRD Rank where FTS cannot make predictions (for example: Latin America, or non-MRDA men’s bouts). (SRDRank also has recent WFTDA rankings, including the 31st June ranking, as well as SRDRank, and allows you to make predictions from them.)

If we’ve missed you from our roundup, please let us know! [Or add yourselves to FTS and/or Derbylisting]

We're trying a new colour coding this week, to differentiate BOUTS from RECRUITMENTS and OPEN SCRIMs, and BOOTCAMPs.

This roundup is our end of year roundup, so covers everything until the new year (also because there's just not much stuff happening).

Scotland

Scotland is still pretty full of skating this weekend before Christmas, with the Last Scrim of 2018 on Friday...

• Wed, Edinburgh: Edinburgh's first Junior Derby team, the Boardwalk Bombs  practices and recruits at The Boardwalk, every Wednesday [EVENT]
• Thurs, Dumbarton: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host Quad Meet sessions [6-10pm, Unit23 Skatepark][EVENT]
• Fri, Glasgow: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby's ongoing new skater intake continues every Friday, for the foreseeable future! [EVENT]
• Fri, Glasgow: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby also see out the year with The Last Scrim of 2018, an Open To All scrimmage event [EVENT]
• Fri, Grangemouth: Bairn City Rollers rolling recruitment continues in their Friday sessions. Open to all genders. [EVENT]
• Edinburgh: The Boardwalk hosts a "Special Christmas Roller Disco" for all ages [EVENT]
• Glasgow: Resistance Roller Derby, Glasgow's Junior Roller Derby club for queer and trans young people continue their training sessions open to new skaters and existing. [EVENT Flyer]
• Kirkwall: Orkney ViQueens host a festive Family Roller Disco for all ages. Fancy dress encouraged. [EVENT]
• Sun, Aberdeen: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a Sunday Skate followed by a park skate outside [Transition Extreme Sports] [EVENT]
• Next Sat (29th), Edinburgh: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a Skatemanay Quad Skate night at the Transgression Park. [EVENT]

United Kingdom

Christmas in the UK means... the final scrimmage of the year.

• Thurs, Carlisle, England: Border City Roller Derby host an Open Christmas Scrim, Open To All genders. Fancy dress encouraged. Referees and NSOs welcome. [EVENT]
• Fri, Scarborough, England: Scarborough Slammers host a Christmas Roller Disco open to all ages. Fancy dress encouraged. [EVENT]

Europe

Europe is still pretty busy, with both France and Belgium hosting public bouts (in Belgium's case, the last fixture in their first ever Championships!).

• Thurs, Prague, Czech Republic: the Hard Breaking Dolls host the second of 5 open training sessions, for interested potential competitive skaters, referees or NSOs. (Skaters limited to WFTDA-gender policy.) [EVENT]
• Fri, Tallinn, Estonia: Tallinn Roller Girls continue to host their open training sessions on Fridays for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Tartu, Estonia: Tartu Roller Derby also continue their open training sessions for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Groningen, Netherlands: Roller Derby Groningen host an Open Scrimmage, Open To All genders (and ages, including juniors), both for the Holiday season, and also to bid farewall to their current hall space. [EVENT]
• Fri, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Rotterdam Roller Derby host an "Open Holiday Scrimmage", the third of three (one each Friday before Christmas). We think these are OTA, and are also open to NSOs. [EVENT]
• Vienna, Austria: Vienna Fearleaders present their release party for their current calendar, as well as an excuse to see them perform live! [EVENT]
• Melrand, France: Roller Derby La Ferraille host a Christmas match [EVENT]
  • La Ferraille versus Les Sabordeuses (Brest B) [FTS]
• Sun, Antwerp, Belgium: Antwerp Roller Derby host the final Belgian Championship fixtures of the year, deciding Division 1 W.  [FTS tournament][EVENT]
  • One Love Roller Dolls (Antwerp) versus GO-GO Gent Roller Derby [rd.be champs d 1]
  • Open scrimmage. (Against Antwerp B?)
• Sun, Lleida, Spain: The Mediterranean Rollers (Barcelona O) and the Sicarias del Cierzo host an Open To All genders and abilities Christmas Open Scrimmage [EVENT]
• Mon, Warsaw, Poland: Worst Warsaw's Open recruitment continues for interested potential members in any roles! [EVENT]
• Wed, Ostrava, Czech Republic: Trojhali Ostrava Roller Derby continue their open training and rolling recruitment? [EVENT]

Pacific

It seems very quiet in the Asia-Pacific region before the end of year.

• Next Sat (29th), Eltham, VIC, Australia: Diamond Valley Roller Derby Club host a "Sausage Sizzle and Bake Sale". [EVENT]

Latin America

The Latin American region is always the hardest for us to find things in. We'd appreciate any heads-up about things we've missed!

• Sat, Bahía Blanca, Argentina: Brujas Roller Girls are either holding or attending a Truco tournament (Truco being an Argentinean card game) today. [EVENT Flyer]
• Sun, San Salvador de Jujuy, Argentina: Mortal Kollas and Coquena's Fighter co-host a "Roller Derby Christmas" bout. [EVENT]
  • Quienes () versus Grinchs (exhibition/open subs game)

Africa and Middle East

Continuing our series of guest posts, we're keeping topical with a review of Namur Roller Girls' league management web app, TrackKarma by Glasgow Men's Roller Derby's Rosie Peacock.

TrackKarma is completely free to use*, although it can only be used as a web application (there is no self-hosting option). The self-reporting on the website says that, at the time of publication, 376 leagues are currently using the service. At present, the service is available in both English and French, and has no user limits.

---

Trackkarma (TK) is an app (well, a website that runs like an app) developed by Namur Roller Girls.
Their launching blurb is as follows….
“Ever dreamed of teams charters, training sessions, attendance, league agenda and directory all gathered in one single tool?
Here it is: TrackKarma, the application that will change the world (or at least your league).
In TrackKarma, members can:

• Manage their player profile and import a cute picture
• Check monthly agenda of games and training sessions
• Inform of their absence at practice
• Communicate with their bench crews
• Visualize team charters and game rosters
• Register to coach at practice...

Bench crews can:

• Organize players into teams
• Select players for game rosters
• Add games and related information to the agenda
• Communicate with their players
• Check players' attendance...

Which sounds AMAZING, so Glasgow Men’s Roller Derby (GMRD) decided to give it a whirl.

Previously GMRD have tried alternatives to Facebook groups such as Slack, but we struggle to get everyone on board with using alternatives as although Facebook is handy for social media, it’s also the devil. [For a review of such options, we recommend this article - Ed]

We have been trialling TrackKarma for about 3 months now and these are my thoughts:
I am a terrible technophobe, and I find TK very easy to use.

It makes sense and I don’t feel stupid using it (yey!).

It is incredibly useful for keeping record of training sessions, games and attendance; however, like most ‘extra’ bits of work we ask skaters to do on top of training, some folk are using it really well, and others haven’t logged on at all.

Initially we asked everyone to be responsible for updating and maintaining their own attendance, but this was a bit optimistic on our part and so now we ask coaches to update skaters’ attendance after each session they coach.

---

The TrackKarma service can be found at https://www.trackkarma.com/

*TrackKarma is supported by a Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/trackkarma . As well as supporting their hosting costs, this Patreon also pays for additional development work and feature support.

We don't normally comment on current events in roller derby on this blog. However, the current shocking events in the UK Roller Derby community have been spreading rapidly, and we felt it would be useful to have an objective location collating the information available. In the past 24 hours, there has been a lot of discussion and horrified reaction, and many responses from across the community; we would not want these to be missed.

---

The UK roller derby community has been shocked this week by revelations that a female NSO appeared in court to answer sexual offence charges.

Laura Nixon-Corfield (known within the community as Sara Tonin) was sentenced after admitting to having and distributing images of child sexual abuse. Over 800 images were cited in the court report, with children picture aged between 1 and 12 years. She received a two year suspended jail sentence, and a 10 year registration on the Sex Offenders register.

The details are reported in the press here: (warning, descriptions of images and messages sent relating to the images have been included in reports):

Manchester Evening News - https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/nhs-worker-downloaded-images-children-15549518

Daily Mirror - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-workers-double-life-online-13729460

Nixon-Corfield had NSO’d and THNSO’d a number of events, working with leagues in both the UK and global community, including the 2017 MRDA Championships in Wales, and National and International tournaments in the current year.

Leagues and organisations Nixon-Corfield has been affiliated with in the past published statements that detailed lifetime bans from leagues and events. Their statements unanimously stated that they were unaware that she was going through any legal proceedings, and did not know that she faced sexual offence charges relating to children.

In a post on Rainy City Roller Derby’s Facebook page, league president Evan Lawrence said: “The Board of RCRD wants to reassure the derby community and the public that we treat the safety of our members and fans incredibly seriously and on discovering this information we have taken immediate action.

“They have been immediately removed and banned from the league, permanently banned from our venue, and any events at which Rainy City is participating.

“We have notified WFTDA, UKRDA, JRDA and British Champs and we are working with them to make sure that we are able to provide a safe space for everyone within the community.

“We are providing counselling for all our members and will also be consulting with local expert organisations for further advice on how to support the league and the derby community.”

Manchester Roller Derby made their own post, explaining that while Nixon-Corfield had previously been a member, they had left the league some time ago, although she had still NSO’d at some of their events, as a local official.

The statement, in part, reads: “Manchester Roller Derby condemns their actions in the strongest possible terms. The safety of our members, their families, the wider derby community and anyone else who may be in attendance at our events is of the upmost importance to us and a priority for the league.

“We find it deeply regrettable that they continued to participate at our events despite having reported themselves to the authorities and despite consciously attending events where junior skaters were present.”

It continues: “In light of the above, and as a safeguarding measure, Manchester Roller Derby have issued a permanent lifetime ban to prevent Laura Nixon-Corfield from attending any Manchester Roller Derby related activities or events.”

And the UKRDA has issued a lifetime ban from any events organised by a UKRDA member league, including British Championships. They also join the long list of entities which have contacted the WFTDA, MRDA and JRDA on this matter.

British Championships also issued their own statement, confirming that Nixon-Corfield had been banned permanently "from participation in all WFTDA, MRDA, UKRDA, JRDA, and British Championships events and groups effective immediately." and affirming that "We are unified in our condemnation of these disgusting and harmful criminal act".

Nottingham Roller Derby confirmed that they have no ongoing relationship with her.

There is currently an ongoing process in several organisations concerning improvements in safeguarding and vetting procedures to limit the possibility of this occurring again, and to help protect children in future.

Update: the MRDA has also issued a statement, revoking Nixon-Corfield's registration, and banning her worldwide from their events. All MRDA leagues have been informed of this decision.

Update (2): the WFTDA has now also made a short statement, also confirming a WFTDA-wide ban, and affirming support for, and solidarity with, their member league Rainy City.

---

Here are the numbers of some organisations who can help if you, or someone you know, has been affected by this incident:

Samaritans: 116 123 or 0845 790 9090

Counselling Directory: 0844 8030 240

National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC): 0808 800 5000

If you are under 18 feel unsafe, or simply want advice, please contact the NSPCC’s Childline on 0800 1111

If you have been affected by sexual abuse and need help there are many great organisations that you can rely on for support.

The Rape Crisis Centre Help line is 0161 273 4500.

National Victims support help line is 0808168 9111 the Rape and Sexual Abuse (RASAC) support Centre national number is 0808 802 9999.

We’re bringing you another roundup of the upcoming Roller Derby this weekend from across the world. As always, we’re using Flat Track Stats for much of this information – for regions with less good coverage, we also do a bit of intensive searching using a tool which scans the Facebook events of Roller Derby leagues known to Derby Listing.

Predictions of bouts are from FTS, if possible, and from our own SRD Rank where FTS cannot make predictions (for example: Latin America, or non-MRDA men’s bouts). (SRDRank also has recent WFTDA rankings, including the 31st June ranking, as well as SRDRank, and allows you to make predictions from them.)

If we’ve missed you from our roundup, please let us know! [Or add yourselves to FTS and/or Derbylisting]

We're trying a new colour coding this week, to differentiate BOUTS from RECRUITMENTS and OPEN SCRIMs, and BOOTCAMPs.

Scotland

Scotland is surprisingly busy this close to Christmas, with Glasgow Men's Roller Derby hosting their MRDA-policy rookie skater game on the Saturday, and also their returning mini-bootcamp series.

• Wed, Edinburgh: Edinburgh's first Junior Derby team, the Boardwalk Bombs  practices and recruits at The Boardwalk, every Wednesday [EVENT]
• Thurs, Dumbarton: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host Quad Meet sessions [6-10pm, Unit23 Skatepark][EVENT]
• Fri, Glasgow: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby's ongoing new skater intake continues every Friday, for the foreseeable future! [EVENT]
• Fri, Grangemouth: Bairn City Rollers rolling recruitment continues in their Friday sessions. Open to all genders. [EVENT]
• Fri, Grangemouth: Bairn City Rollers combine the above with an Open Scrim (presumably Open To All genders), with a Christmas theme [EVENT]
• Glasgow: Resistance Roller Derby, Glasgow's Junior Roller Derby club for queer and trans young people continue their training sessions open to new skaters and existing. [EVENT Flyer]
• Grangemouth: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby host an MRDA-policy centred Debut Skater game, aimed at encouraging and developing the MRDA side of the sport in Scotland. [EVENT]
• Sun, Aberdeen: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a Sunday Skate followed by a park skate outside [Transition Extreme Sports] [EVENT]
• Tues, Aberdeen: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a regular Quad Meet (Transition Extreme) [EVENT]
• Tues, Edinburgh: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby host the 8th edition of Jammer Club, their irregular series of Jammer "mini-bootcamp"s, coached by Optimus Grime. Open To All genders. [EVENT]

United Kingdom

Christmas in the UK as a whole means "scrimmage", and there's a huge number of open scrims of various gender policies across the country. The only actual public bout we know of is in Halifax, however.

• Wed, Swansea, Wales: Swansea City Roller Derby host a Christmas Open Scrim, open to WFTDA gender policy conforming skaters (and all referees, NSOs). [EVENT]
• Thurs, Leeds, England: Leeds Roller Derby host a Christmas Guest Skater night (essentially an open scrim and training), open to WFTDA-gender-policy conforming skaters. [EVENT]
• Thurs, Middlesbrough, England: Middlesbrough Roller Derby host a Christmas themed Open Scrimmage (team Santa v team Elf). No gender policy stated. [EVENT]
• Fri, Barrow-in-Furness, England: Furness Roller Derby host a Christmas Roller Disco to close out the year. Appearance by Santa Claus guaranteed for the children attending. [EVENT]
• Fri, Stratford, England: London Rockin' Rollers host a "meet the Rookies" event, as a social welcome to the league. [EVENT]
• Basingstoke, England: The Basingstoke Bullets host a Xmas Fun Skate, open to all skaters of all abilities, fancy dress encouraged. [EVENT]
• Leeds, England: Double Threat Skates host another of their regular Pop Up Shops "Up North", with a free open skate too. [EVENT]
• Lincoln, England: Lincolnshire Bombinos host a Junior Derby open mixed scrim (open to Junior skaters, entry fee applies) [EVENT]
• Lincoln, England: Lincolnshire Bombers also host a Christmas Roller Disco, raising funds for SANDS (Sillbirths And Neonatal DeathS) [EVENT]
• Nottingham, England: Nottingham Hellfire Harlots host a Christmas Craft Fair (with free entry), supporting homemade and local crafts. [EVENT]
• Oldham, England: The Knights of Oldham host a "Saturday Knight Fever" Roller disco... [EVENT]
• Sun, Grimsby, England: Grimsby Roller Derby host "Home Alone" an Xmas Charity Scrim event. (Actually two scrims, both raising funds for the charity "Not Home Alone"). [EVENT]
  • WFTDA-gender-policy scrim
  • OTA genders scrim.
• Sun, Halifax, England: The Bruising Banditas host a double header "Snow Brawl" [EVENT]
  • WFTDA-aligned Skater Debut bout: Jingle Belles versus Candy Canors
  • Bruising Banditas (Halifax) versus Spa Town Roller Derby (Harrogate) [FTS]
• Sun, Manchester, England: Manchester Roller Derby host their End of Year, Mixed Level, Open To All genders Open Scrim! [EVENT]
• Sun, Nottingham, England: Nottingham Hellfire Harlots follow up their Fair with an Open Christmas Scrim, open to WFTDA-gender-policy conforming skaters. [EVENT]
• Sun, Oadby, England: Leicestershire Dolly Rockit Rollers host "Propeh Scrimbo", an Open To All genders Open Scrim. [EVENT]
• Sun, Wallasey, England: Wirral Roller Derby and the Pack Animals co-host a Super Sunday Scrim, a scrim event Open To All genders, with WFTDA-gender and MRDA-gender policy lineups for max inclusivity [EVENT]
• Tues, Sheffield, England: Sheffield Steel Rollergirls host their December Megascrim, 90-minutes of Open scrim, open to WFTDA-gender-policy conforming skaters. [EVENT]

Europe

Europe... and especially France... is very much still in bouting mood this close to Christmas. There's a huge number of tournaments (and single headers) across the continent, including Belgian Championship games and German Bundesliga fixtures.

• Thurs, Prague, Czech Republic: the Hard Breaking Dolls host the first of 5 open training sessions, for interested potential competitive skaters, referees or NSOs. (Skaters limited to WFTDA-gender policy.) [EVENT]
• Thurs, Toulouse, France: Roller Derby Toulouse host the last of their Recruitment days for their Men's Derby component (QuadGuards et al). [EVENT]
• Fri, Tallinn, Estonia: Tallinn Roller Girls continue to host their open training sessions on Fridays for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Tartu, Estonia: Tartu Roller Derby also continue their open training sessions for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Rotterdam Roller Derby host an "Open Holiday Scrimmage", the second of three (one each Friday before Christmas). We think these are OTA, and are also open to NSOs. [EVENT]
• Fri, A Coruña, Spain: As Brigantias host a Recruitment / Intro To Roller Derby outreach event, with the assistance of the City Council [EVENT]
• Oulu, Finland: Oulu Roller Derby celebrate the festive season with a B teams single header [EVENT]
  • Oulu B versus Tampere B [FTS]
• Anglet, France: Roller Derby Côte Basque host a Happy Derby Christmas event... [EVENT]
  • Valient Bitchiz (Bayonne) versus Botxo Killers (Bilbo) [FTS]
• Charleroi, Belgium: The Blackland Rockin' K-Rollers host a quadruple header as part of the Belgian Championships. [FTS tournament][EVENT]
  • Blackland Randy Devils (Charleroi M) versus RATM (Arras M) [FTS]
  • Atomium Kittens (Brussels B) versus Blackland Rockin K-Rollers [RD.be D 2]
  • Brussels Derby Pixies (Brussels) versus Namur Roller Girls [RD.be D 1]
  • Atomium Kittens versus Holy Wheels Menace (Leige) [RD.be D 2]
• Bordeaux, France: Roller Derby Bordeaux Club co-hosts a weekend of open skating events, with skating from 2pm on Sat, and all day on Sun [EVENT]
• Brest, France: B.M.O Roller Derby Girls host a single header for Xmas [EVENT]
  • Toutes Étoiles (Brest) versus Les Duchesses (Nantes) [FTS]
• Cholet, France: Cholet Roller Derby host an recruitment day as part of the Cholet Decathlon, including a demonstration [EVENT]
• Clermont-Ferrand, France: the Auver'Niaks host a festive double header("Le Père Noël est une jammeuse."). [EVENT]
  • Auver'Niaks B (Clermont-Ferrand B) versus Bloody Angels (Melun) [FTS]
  • Auver'Niaks A versus Reaper's Crew (Epinal) [FTS]
• Sat+Sun, Dijon, France: The Velvet Owls host a weekend of Roller Derby, "Jammer is Coming". [EVENT]
  • Namur Glorious Basterds (Namur M) versus La Raclée (Dijon M) [FTS]
  • Zombeers (Calais M) versus Namur Glorious Basterds [FTS]
  • La Raclée versus Zombeers [FTS]
  • Dead Dragibus (Calais J) versus Les P'tits Bou'Niaks (Clermont-Ferrand J) [FTS?]
  • Velvet Must'Hard (Dijon B) versus Black Tagada (Calais) [FTS]
• Sainte Geneviève des Bois, France: The Psyko'Quads host a single header event with little fanfare [EVENT]
  • Psyko'Quads (Sainte Geneviève des Bois) versus Knock'n'Roll Cannibals (Creil) [FTS]
• Sat+Sun, Strasbourg, France: Hell's Ass Derby Girls and Les Menneles co-host Bretz'Hell Battle, a "Coed" Grand Tournament, with several OTA teams competing. [EVENT]
  • Le Peine Capitale (Paris O) versus Strasbourg Roller Derby (Hell's Ass + Les Menneles | Strasbourg O)
  • UB (open subs OTA team) versus Orcet (Orcet RD + Wolfgang | Orcet O)
  • La Peine Capitale versus UB
  • Strasbourg versus Orcet
  • Le Peine Capitale versus Orcet
  • Strasbourg versus UB
  • "final" and "3rd place?"
• The Hague, Netherlands: The Parliament of Pain host "The Fight Before Christmas: Onion Edition". This is a triple header of OTA derby, with open-subs teams, and a raffle! [EVENT]
  • X-Mas Circus versus X-Mas on Ice
  • X-Mas on Ice versus X-Mas at Iron Mist's
  • X-Mas at Iron Mist's versus X-Mas Circus
• Sat-Sun, Candeán, Spain: Lobishomes Men's Roller Derby host their first mixed tournament, Full Moon Showdown. There's not much public info about the teams attending, however. [EVENT]
  • Teams Attending:
    • Jabatas Roller Derby (Ourense)
    • Lobishommes (Galicia/Vigo M)
    • "Spanish mash-up team"
• Geneva, Switzerland: Genève Roller Derby United host "Les Matchs del la marmite" (referring to the pot, not the savoury spread), a double header event. [EVENT]
  • Les Taxider'Biches (Léman A) versus Mères Royaume (Geneva) [FTS]
  • Cannibal Marmots Cééé (Grenoble C) versus Black Votchkas (Neuchâtel + Fribourg mix)
• Sun, Braine-le-Comte, Belgium: Manneken Beasts host a triple header of MRDA derby games in the return of their "Merry Hitmas" event [EVENT]
  • Manneken Beasts (Brussels M) versus Panam Squad (Paris M) [FTS]
  • Tampere Rollin' Bros (Tampere M) versus Panam Squad [FTS]
  • Manneken Beasts versus Tampere Rollin' Bros [FTS]
• Sun, Dijon, France: Roller Derby Dijon (we assume) host a Round Table on the future of Junior Roller Derby in France. [EVENT]
• Sun, Ligugé, France: Les Broyeuses du Poitou host the third edition of their winter tournament, Winter is Rolling. This edition is a triple header [EVENT]
  • Marcheuses Blanches versus La Garde de Nuit ("White Walkers" versus "Night's Watch"), mixed teams.
  • Broyeuses du Poitou (Poitiers) versus Pirnanas (Chateauroux) [FTS]
  • Grandes Goulges (Poitiers O?) versus Royales Mandales (Rennes O?)
• Sun, Lille, France: Lomme Roller Girls host a triple header event to close the season, against all of Paris! [EVENT]
  • Tétons Flingueurs (Lomme C) versus San Culottes (Paris C) [FTS]
  • Glorious Bâtardes (Lomme B) versus Quedalles (Paris B) [FTS]
  • Bad Bunnies (Lomme A) versus Paris All-stars (Paris A) [FTS]

• Sun, Montpezat-sous-Bauzon, France: The Criminal Nurses of Aubenas host a Christmas double-header, the 4th edition of "Track's Anatomy". [EVENT]

  • Criminal Nurses (Aubenas) versus Head Hunters (Narbonne) [FTS]
  • White v Black UB (open subs) game.

• Sun, Sainte Geneviève des Bois, France: The Psyko'Quads return with a second fixture, a Scrimmage/Friendly game  [EVENT]
  • Psyko'Quads (Sainte Geneviève des Bois) versus Channibals Lecters (Creil B) [FTS?}
• Sun, Karlsruhe, Germany: The rocKArollers host one of the last sets of Bundesliga Div 2 fixtures in this season [FTS Tournament][EVENT]
  • Delta Quads (Mannheim) versus Riot Rollers (Darmstadt) [Bundesliga D 2]
  • rocKArollers (Karlsruhe) versus Demolition Derby Dolls (Hannover) [Bundesliga D 2]
• Sun, Västerås, Sweden: Västerås Roller Derby host "All I Want for Christmas is a Roller Derby Double Header"... a Roller Derby Double header. [EVENT]
  • Västerås Roller Derby versus LKPG Go'Rullaz (Linköping) [FTS]
  • Västerås Roller Derby versus Sundsvall Demolition Rollers [FTS]
• Mon, Warsaw, Poland: Worst Warsaw's Open recruitment continues for interested potential members in any roles! [EVENT]
• Mon, Zürich, Switzerland: Zürich City Roller Derby host their next open tryouts for those interested in joining the team, in any capacity. Open To All genders. [EVENT]
• Tues, A Coruña, Spain: As Brigantias follow up their open recruitment day with an outreach event at Centro Social A Comuna [EVENT]
• Wed, Ostrava, Czech Republic: Trojhali Ostrava Roller Derby continue their open training and rolling recruitment [EVENT]

Pacific

It... seems... very quiet in Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region this weekend, but it's also possible we're missing events. Do let us know if we've missed you.

• Sun, Westbury, TAS, Australia: Devil State Derby League host their regular Monthly Scrim, Open To All skaters. [EVENT]
• Sun, California Gully, VIC, Australia: Dragon City Roller Derby host "Wreck the Halls", a Christmas Scrimmage event. Open to WFTDA-gender-policy conforming skaters, 16+ age. [EVENT]
  • Low contact Scrimmage
  • Full contact Scrimmage

Latin America

The big event in Latin America is the Huiñas returning tournament Quad Beer II, covering teams across Argentina!

• Fri, Córdoba, Argentina: Insubordinades Roller Derby Disidente host their third intraleague game with almost no notice (event announced the day before) [EVENT Flyer]
• Sat+Sun, Bariloche, Argentina: The Huiñas Roller Derby host their second Tournament, Quad Beer II. [EVENT]
  • Teams:
    • Huinas Roller Derby
    • Hijas de Pantano
    • Ambulatory Derby Team
    • Barderas Insurrectas (Neuquen)
    • Hienas de la Calle (Neuquen)
    • Moron Roller Derby (Moròn)
    • Zapala Roller Derby
  • Day 1 schedule:
    • Huiñas versus Moron [FTS]
    • Ambulatory versus Zapala
    • Moron versus Barderas Insurrectas
    • Zapala versus Hienas de la Calle
    • Barderas Insurrectas versus Huiñas
    • Hienas de la Calle versus Ambulatory
• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Avas Roller Derby host a recruitment day for interested new skaters. [EVENT]
• Valdivia, Chile: Roller Derby Valdivia celebrate their 3rd birthday with a triple header event! [EVENT]
  • Indomitas RD (Valdivia) vs Diosas Volcánicas (Puerto Montt)
  • Indomitos RD (Valdivia O) vs Coed Chillan (Chillan O)
  • Colusion Austral (Valdivia? M) vs Chillanrrolleros (Chillan M)
• Bogota, Colombia: Rock N Roller Queens celebrate their 9th birthday with a "Tropical Queens" party event! [EVENT]

• San Jose, Costa Rica: Panties Dinamita Roller Derby host an international game to finish their year! There's only a mysterious instagram post to confirm this... [EVENT Flyer]
  • Panties Dinamita (Costa Rica/San Jose) versus Burdel Zombie (Mexico City) [FTS]
• Ciudad Juarez, Mexico: Medias Rotas Juniors host their final home-teams game of the year [EVENT]
  • Grinch versus Santa Claus (Junior home teams)
• Sun, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Kamikazes Roller Derby celebrate their 6th birthday with a party - which is also raising funds for local animal shelters. [EVENT]
• Sun, São Paulo, Brazil: the Ladies of Helltown are hosting an "open training" session for any interested potential members who want to experience the sport. [EVENT]
• Sun, San Joaquín, Chile: Unión Subversiva Roller Derby host a "Roller Derby Flea Market" as a fundraiser and source of unique festive gifts [EVENT]
• Sun, Mexico City?, Mexico: Jaibronas Roller Derby are hosted for triple-header "friendly" against two of Mexico City Roller Derby's teams, which is a debut for the Jaibronas! [EVENT]
  • Jaibronas (Tampico Madero) versus Quadtlicues (Mexico City)
  • Jaibronas versus Catrinas (Mexico City)
  • Quadtlicues versus Catrinas

Africa and Middle East

Although we've written a lot on SRD [1, 2, 3 , 4 etc] and privately [1,2, 3etc] on rating and ranking Roller Derby over the years, the question of how to do this fairly in WFTDA has been another topic of discussion recently. 
Like Tennis, and many other sports, the WFTDA "rankings" (which are really a rating) are not slaved to the ordering of any particular tournament, including WFTDA Championships - meaning that it is possible for the current WFTDA Champions to not also be #1 in the Rankings released at the end of the year.

Statistically, this is, of course, not a problem, but the position is still counter-intuitive to some members of the community. Some blame the specific construction of the WFTDA rating system itself, whilst others simply believe that Tournaments should supersede mathematical methods for determining rating. 
As a result, every year when the WFTDA Championship winner does not automatically become the WFTDA #1 rated team, the question of "how good are WFTDA Ratings?" is raised again.

In the spirit of this, we decided to actually test this, rather than just complaining about an aspect of the rating we didn't like.
Using Flat Track Stats' records of all Roller Derby bouts, we selected the entire history of all WFTDA Sanctioned bouts in the history of the sport, all the way back to 2005. Using these, we calculated what the ratings and rankings would look like now, if we used various methods for rating teams.

"Elo" ratings, named for Arpad Elo, who developed them initially to rate performance of Chess players, are a particularly easy kind of rating to implement. As a base comparison to our other ratings, we wrote a very quick Elo rating for WFTDA Sanctioned bouts, based entirely on Win/Loss records: the rating does not care how much a team won or lost by, just that they did.

We'll compare this to three other ratings:
FTS (WFTDA): the Flat Track Stats rating, as optimised for WFTDA Sanctioned bouts. FTS is also an Elo rating, although its updates take into account the degree of success, not just that a team won; it also has a couple of other factors to account for things like home team advantage. 
SRDRank (v2): this blog's in-house rating scheme. We've written a lot about this before, but it's essentially an entirely different kind of rating scheme to Elo; rather than updating pairs of teams on each game, SRDRank is a Massey-style scheme, which tries to produce consistent ratings to explain all of the games in its "purview" at once. This version of SRDRank was optimised for monthly predictions, against the world, not just the smaller subset of WFTDA Sanctioned games.
WFTDA: the official WFTDA rating and ranking, which is used to rank teams for selection into the official WFTDA tournaments. WFTDA ratings are specifically designed to be "easy for people to understand" without specialist knowledge, as well as, presumably, aiming to reflect the history of performance of their member leagues.

Predictive accuracy

The key conflict between expectations of Rating systems and the reality, is often one between "prediction" and "postdiction".

"Prediction" is, of course, using a rating to guess what a future result would be, by comparing the ratings of the competitors previously.
"Postdiction", conversely, is using a rating to judge "how well" two teams have performed, over their recent history.

Whilst it may seem that the two are closely related, in fact, it isn't inherently true that a rating which has high accuracy at one is also highly accurate at the other. In general, prediction is harder than postdiction - it's always hard to guess what's going to happen beforehand - but for teams whose strength has varied a lot over their season, it also can be hard for a postdictive approach to represent their "overall performance" in a satisfying way.

In neither case, of course, does "high accuracy" mean "always places the winner of a particular tournament at #1". All rating systems are statistical, and try to produce the best overall measure of performance, for all teams, and all possible contests. The difference between the top teams is just as relevant as those between the middle and lowest rated teams.

Equally important to the accuracy of a rating - at either task - is the frequency at which it is updated. Elo ratings, including the FTS ratings, are designed to update every time a game happens, so their accuracy can be measured either side of a given result. Some other ratings are published less frequently - WFTDA's ratings are monthly to bimonthly, depending on the time of year, and SRDRank is designed to produce predictions no faster than daily. Frequent ratings aren't necessarily the "best" ratings, especially for postdiction - a "long-term overview" can sometimes produce a better overall view of historical performance than a rapidly updated one focused on bout-by-bout changes; but for prediction, especially in the middle of tournaments, it's usually best to have all the most recent information available for your next bet.

To illustrate this, we've plotted the performance of four different ratings, at both postdiction and prediction, when we take updates at yearly, quarterly, monthly, fortnightly, and "bout-by-bout" intervals. For some rating schemes, not all intervals were available: FTS doesn't easily provide "historical rating" collections for anything more frequent than quarterly results. (We have a single data point for the FTS "bout-by-bout" period, for prediction, thanks to Ioan Wigmore.); WFTDA ratings are not updated faster than monthly at best; SRDRank doesn't produce "bout-by-bout" updates for this kind of data.

In all cases, the postdiction accuracies (as percentage "correct") are shown by triangles, and the prediction accuracies by circles; the same colour is used for a given rating scheme. More "rapid" updates are to the left of the graph.

The first thing that should be clear is that postdiction is, in general, easier than prediction: every rating has a higher postdiction accuracy than prediction accuracy, for every update period.

The Elo rating has some of the highest postdiction accuracies, partly because it responds "fully" to every win or loss: a win counts 100%, even if it was a narrow victory, so each result pulls the rating around strongly, making it reflect history. This tendency to be "recency-biased" also explains why its postdiction gets "better" on shorter updates: a "weekly" postdiction only has to represent the last week of play accurately, and that's what Elo is best at. When we need the Elo rating to represent an entire year of performance, its bias towards the most recent month harms it overall.

That same effect, also means that the Elo rating is also the worst at prediction: because it counts all wins equally, a single narrow upset can throw off any trend it was measuring.

SRDRank and FTS are closely matched for the update periods where they can be compared, with SRDRank having a slight advantage in prediction, and a noticeable one in postdiction; by comparison, the WFTDA rating is worse than all other ratings at postdiction, except on the yearly scale, and only better than the Elo rating at prediction. SRDRank is particularly good at "yearly review" postdiction: representing the entire year's performance overall; this is because of design decisions which mean that it considers an 18 month period of games in order to make its rating evaluation. The same "long term" view means that its postdictions are worse at reflecting "short term" history than the recency-focused Elo, although it still out-performs every other metric at this task.
The WFTDA rating, meanwhile, is hampered by having a maximum amount it can respond to any "strength change", meaning that it struggles to keep up with the more performant ratings on postdiction; and its simple rating calculation is not sophisticated enough to predict well.

For prediction, the "sports prediction" literature generally considers accuracies above about 70% to be excellent. On that measure, only two ratings are excellent for Roller Derby prediction: SRDRank (fortnightly or weekly updates), and FTS ("bout by bout", although it is likely that it would also be excellent on the same timescales SRDRank is). It is likely that better than 75% or so win/loss prediction accuracy is impossible for Roller Derby: there are always closely-matched games which "could go either way", which even an accurate algorithm will guess wrongly about half the time by definition.
We should also say that, by this measure, the WFTDA rating isn't that bad at all, only just missing out on that 70% benchmark, although it's not in the same class as the other two schemes.

For postdiction, there are less expectations on excellence, as the difficulty is partly dependant on how "variable" the sport is. The ~85% accuracy attained by Elo (quarterly or shorter) and SRDRank (yearly) is exceptional, however. The WFTDA rating actually does fairly well at "yearly" postdiction - summarising the years' performance in a single measure - but it is worse than every other metric when applied on a more frequent basis.

Predictive Accuracy (with close misses)

As we mentioned above, simply judging a rating on its ability to call wins and losses causes problems when evaluating close games. A good rating will predict that a close bout will be close; but inevitably, random chance will cause it to be wrong about which one of the contestants will actually win.

There are several ways in which we can correct for this issue: we can move to measuring the success at predicting actual score-lines (not just winners and losers), but this is hard to compare for our metrics (mainly as the Elo rating isn't designed to predict score-lines); or, we can give credit to the rating for results it gets wrong if the game was close, and the rating predicted it to be close.

[As an aside: SRDRank was actually optimised against the first metric: getting score-lines as close as possible, for the entire world's history of games.]

As an example of how this changes our evaluation of ratings, we've graphed the accuracies of the Elo and SRDRank ratings again, for both pre- and post-diction. This time, we've included a second set of points for each: the success measured, including games which the rating called the winner wrong, but correctly predicted the result to be close either way (within 10% on the scoreline).

As you can see, including "close games" results in a significant boost to our evaluation of all the metrics, although it does not "reverse the order" of any of our ratings in terms of relative performance. (Notably, SRDRank's yearly postdiction now narrowly beats all comers when you include close games, even defeating Elo's best postdiction with close games.)
Although we did not include them on the graph (in order to make the graph still somewhat readable), we'd expect similar gains for the FTS and WFTDA ratings; an average of around 2% additional "successes" for each test.

Best Rating for a Job

Given the metrics above, we can attempt to select the "best" ratings to use for a particular task. We've selected four representative tasks, and mapped them to the mode (pre- and post-diction) and "timescales" on which they operate, to select recommendations, and warnings, on the approaches you should consider.

Season Review is the task of summarising, as best you can, the overall performance of the field over the past season. This is a postdiction task, on a long timescale (six months to a year). This is also a very closely contested task, and there's not much to call between all 4 ratings.

Medium-term Prediction is the task of predicting results several weeks to months in advance, to plan tournaments and games.

Play-by-Play Prediction is the task of predicting results on the minute, judging your next game at a tournament, for example. 

Medium-term Review is the task of summarising, the overall performance of the field, on the scale of months. This is the "coaching" metric, when judging how well your team is evolving. For this, second place is very tight.

Task	Best	2nd Best	Worst
Season Review (Yearly postdiction)	SRDRank	WFTDA	FTS & Elo (joint)
Medium-term Prediction	SRDRank	FTS	Elo
Play-by-Play Prediction	FTS	SRDRank (weekly)	Elo
Medium-term Review (Quarterly postdiction)	Elo	SRDRank & FTS (joint)	WFTDA

Yearly Performance Ratings

We can also (bearing in mind the relative expectations of accuracy, as discussed in the rest of this article), generate the full "rankings" for all of the WFTDA member leagues for 2018. (The WFTDA Ranking here is the one from 30 Nov 2018, the most recently available ranking and rating from WFTDA).
We present here the top 20, with ratings, from each scheme - notice that, despite the differences, there are far more similarities than disagreements.
(Ratings are truncated for space: the error introduced by truncation rather than rounding is much smaller than the expected error on the ratings themselves, so this is not an issue.)

Top 20s (Tabular)

Rank	WFTDA	SRDRank	Elo	FTS
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.	Victoria (1255) Rose (1241) Gotham (1174) Denver (1162) Arch Rival (1110)	Victoria (3.36) Rose (3.35) Gotham (3.15) Denver (3.07) Arch Rival (3.03)	Rose (2637) Victoria (2592) Gotham (2516) Arch Rival (2281) Angel City (2267)	Rose (1005) Victoria (1003) Gotham (984) Denver (977) Arch Rival (962)
6. 7. 8. 9. 10.	Angel City (904) Montreal (871) Texas (857) Jacksonville (841) Crime City (827)	Angel City (2.71) Texas (2.57) Montreal (2.49) Crime City (2.48) Jacksonville (2.41)	Denver (2262) Texas (2182) Montreal (2167) Jacksonville (2102) Minnesota (2100)	Angel City (946) Texas (924) Montreal (901) Crime City (899) London (890)
11. 12. 13. 14. 15.	Atlanta (778) London (767) 2×4 (713) Helsinki (704) Santa Cruz (693)	London (2.34) 2×4 (2.33) Rainy City (2.27) Canberra (2.25) Atlanta (2.24)	London (2087) Crime City (2084) Atlanta (2070) Oly (2055) Dallas (1974)	Rainy City (887) Jacksonville (885) Minnesota (880) Atlanta (880) 2×4 (875)
16. 17. 18. 19. 20.	Minnesota (691) Rainy City (686) Rat City (686) Arizona (655) Stockholm (648)	Helsinki (2.15) Rat City (2.13) Minnesota (1.99) Bay Area (1.96) Santa Cruz (1.94)	Bay Area (1951) Rainy City (1941) Philly (1938) Arizona (1928) Santa Cruz (1925)	Rat City (874) Santa Cruz (870) Bay Area (866) Helsinki (863) Canberra (849)

All WFTDA Leagues (graph, image)

As we've previously discussed, however, strict rankings are a bad way to represent the performance of teams. It's much better, even with 1-dimensional ratings, to report those ratings, providing a better measure of the "distance" between teams, than to imply that all teams are equally "1 better" than the team immediately "below" them in ranking.

As such, we've generated a graph of all the teams rated by at least one of our ratings in their yearly review. We order the teams in "WFTDA ranking" order, with teams not in the official WFTDA ranking placed at the end. 
In order to provide a good comparison, we've rescaled all the ratings to represent logarithmic relative strength, compared to the "top" team in the rating*. (That is: for every "1" difference in rating, the better team is expected to score about 2.7× as much in a game; for every "2" difference, 2.7²× (7.4×), for every "3" difference, 2.7³× (20×) and so on.)
This image is unavoidably large in order to be legible; click the preview to get the full-size version.
Note that the full range of the entire rated cohort for all ratings is about 8, corresponding to the top 3 teams being expected to score around 3000× more points than the bottom 3 (or, effectively, a complete shutout).

It's worth noting that, in general, there's still a reasonable agreement on the overall "shape" of the rating; the ratings all broadly agree on the strength difference between the top and bottom ends of the list, and whilst there are disagreements in order, there's also a lot of agreement about the overall place of most teams.
It's also possible to see how the "difference in skill between ranks" changes: the steeper the slope of the curve, the more change there is in relative skill as you change ranking. For WFTDA Member leagues, there seems to be a relatively flat middle section, where adjacent teams are actually very close in strength; at the top end, there's a much steeper rating change with rank, until the curve flattens again around the top 3 or 4. (All the ratings pretty much agree that Victoria and Rose are near-tied in the top 2, they just disagree about which is a tiny sliver ahead.)

Conclusion

We've given an overview and test of the official WFTDA rating scheme, versus 3 contenders for a range of use cases.
Contrary to some complaints, the WFTDA rating scheme turns out to be a pretty good rating, for post-diction, on the longer timescales. 
More sophisticated schemes do better than it at almost all tests, but its performance, given its simplicity and the trade-offs it makes to try to prevent high-skill teams playing low-skilled teams for blowouts all the time, is acceptable.
Also, this test run underlines just how hard it is to make gains in predicting (or postdicting) game results: the gap between the worst and best performing metrics in this test is never more than 10%, and the gap between the "good" ratings tends to be around the 1% level. 
We do note that, for prediction, Flat Track Stats attains class-leading performance, especially on short time scales. (It is just as good when rating European teams, MRDA teams, or any other region where it has an actively calculated rating.) We'd encourage regions which do not have their own rating scheme to contact Flat Track Stats to host such a thing for them. (The other benefit to this is that you have a place to store all your results: Flat Track Stats is also a public repository of all the game data which is uploaded to it.)

---

*WFTDA estimated strength differences are calculated using the predicted strength ratios in the WFTDA algorithm, not the predicted "points gained". Other calculators use the points-gained formula, as they're interested in seeing how the rating changes with results: we're interested in how strong WFTDA's rating actually thinks teams are, which is different. (The fact that these are different for WFTDA is why sufficiently strong teams can't play weak teams without losing overall rating: points gains doesn't keep pace with strength difference. None of the other rating schemes in this article have this behaviour.)

We’re bringing you another roundup of the upcoming Roller Derby this weekend from across the world. As always, we’re using Flat Track Stats for much of this information – for regions with less good coverage, we also do a bit of intensive searching using a tool which scans the Facebook events of Roller Derby leagues known to Derby Listing.

Predictions of bouts are from FTS, if possible, and from our own SRD Rank where FTS cannot make predictions (for example: Latin America, or non-MRDA men’s bouts). (SRDRank also has recent WFTDA rankings, including the 31st June ranking, as well as SRDRank, and allows you to make predictions from them.)

If we’ve missed you from our roundup, please let us know! [Or add yourselves to FTS and/or Derbylisting]

We're trying a new colour coding this week, to differentiate BOUTS from RECRUITMENTS and OPEN SCRIMs, and BOOTCAMPs.

Scotland

Scotland is a little quieter this weekend, as Christmas approaches. There's still a chance to get some track time in Aberdeen on Thursday though.

• Wed, Edinburgh: Edinburgh's first Junior Derby team, the Boardwalk Bombs  practices and recruits at The Boardwalk, every Wednesday [EVENT]
• Thurs, Aberdeen: Granite City Roller Derby host an Open (WFTDA-gender) Scrim, free for first time attendees. Visiting officials also welcome. [EVENT]
• Thurs, Dumbarton: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host Quad Meet sessions [6-10pm, Unit23 Skatepark][EVENT]
• Fri, Dundee: Dundee Roller Derby host their annual Christmas Party, celebrating the end of the year and season, including a quiz! [EVENT]
• Fri, Edinburgh: Auld Reekie Roller Derby host their end of year Awards Night for 2018! [EVENT]
• Fri, Glasgow: Glasgow Men's Roller Derby's ongoing new skater intake continues every Friday, for the foreseeable future! [EVENT]
• Fri, Grangemouth: Bairn City Rollers rolling recruitment continues in their Friday sessions. Open to all genders. [EVENT]
• Glasgow: Resistance Roller Derby, Glasgow's Junior Roller Derby club for queer and trans young people continue their training sessions open to new skaters and existing. [EVENT Flyer]
• Sun, Aberdeen: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a Sunday Skate followed by a park skate outside [Transition Extreme Sports] [EVENT]
• Tues, Aberdeen: Chicks in Bowls Scotland host a regular Quad Meet (Transition Extreme) [EVENT]

United Kingdom

Across the rest of the UK, there's a host of bouts, even a week into December, even if most are charity style events.

• Thurs, Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Newcastle Roller Girls host a Christmas Movie Pub Quiz  [EVENT]
• Fri, Lincoln, England: Lincolnshire Bombers Roller Derby also host a festive event, with their Christmas Party closing out the year [EVENT]
• Fri, Bridgend, Wales: Bridgend Roller Derby host a "Christmas Family Skate" [EVENT]
• Oxford, England: Oxford Roller Derby host their "Grinchmas Games", a pair of open-subs games, raising funds for SAFE [EVENT]
  • WFTDA-gender Rookie game
  • OTA Intermediate/advanced game
• Portsmouth, England: Portsmouth Roller Wenches host their last fixture of the year, an A/B double header [EVENT]
  • Portsmouth Roller Wenches A versus North Devon Roller Derby A [FTS]
  • Portsmouth Roller Wenches B versus North Devon Roller Derby B [FTS]
• Merthyr Tydfil, Wales: Merthyr Roller Derby host a pre-Christmas Roller Derby Sevens tournament to close out the year. (No real details on teams yet...) [EVENT]
  • teams?
• Wrexham, Wales: North Wales Roller Derby complete the year with their regular Christmas Scrim event, a double header of scrims [EVENT]
  • OTA Rookie Scrim
  • WFTDA-gender Intermediate/Advanced Scrim
• Sun, Birmingham, England: the Crash Test Brummies host "A Smashing Good Time", a festive open scrimmage, Open To All genders. [EVENT]
• Sun, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Rollerbillies have a stall at the Last Gang's Alternative Xmas Market, a closed market supporting local and home-grown vendors. [EVENT]
• Sun, Eastbourne, England:  Eastbourne Roller Derby host their annual Christmas Scrim, with three different scrim types [EVENT]
  • OTA scrim
  • WFTDA-gender scrim
  • Juniors scrim
• Sun, Guildford, England: Surrey Roller Girls host their 7th Birthday Bash, especially open to all people in the community who've played SRG this year. Event includes roller disco, party games, stalls, potluck picnic and more! [EVENT]
• Tues, Whitchurch, England: Basingstoke Bullets host a Tuesday Xmas Fun Skate event, Open To All, fancy dress encouraged [EVENT]
• Wed, Swansea, Wales: Swansea City Roller Derby host their Christmas open scrim, open to WFTDA-gender-policy, mins-passed skaters [EVENT]

Europe

The French National tournament continues to roll on, with the second Nationale 1 fixture of the current season this weekend. There's also huge amounts of Roller Derby across all of Europe, especially in Helsinki and Stockholm... a German Bundesliga fixture, and a pair of Belgian Champs fixtures. There's even two big bootcamps! [And Derby in Moscow is recruiting!]

• Thurs, Prague, Czech Republic: the Hard Breaking Dolls host the first of 5 open training sessions, for interested potential competitive skaters, referees or NSOs. (Skaters limited to WFTDA-gender policy.) [EVENT]
• Thurs, Helsinki, Finland: Chicks in Bowls Helsinki host a Shred Day in collaboration with Helsinki Roller Derby. This includes multiple sessions, with beginners' and more advanced workshops, gear talk, and "games and competitions". [EVENT]
• Thurs, Moscow, Russia: Rollerciraptor Roller Derby Moscow host their first open-recruitment into a training series! Open under WFTDA-gender to all interested skaters. [EVENT Flyer]
• Fri, Tallinn, Estonia: Tallinn Roller Girls continue to host their open training sessions on Fridays for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Tartu, Estonia: Tartu Roller Derby also continue their open training sessions for all interested attendees. [EVENT]
• Fri, Karlsruhe, Germany: Roller Derby Karlsruhe host the last of their Scrimmage Nights, open to "female only" skaters. [EVENT]
• Fri, Rome, Italy: the She-Wolves of Roller Derby Roma are giving a demonstration at the Love 80s 90s 00s event hosted by Free Unicorns events. [EVENT]
• Fri, Rotterdam, Netherlands: Rotterdam Roller Derby host an "Open Holiday Scrimmage", the first of three (one each Friday before Christmas). We think these are OTA, and are also open to NSOs. [EVENT]
• Fri, Farsta, Sweden: Stockholm Roller Derby host their Christmas home teams finale, with a Harry Potter theme [EVENT]
  • Death Eaters versus Aurors (home teams)
• Vienna, Austria: Vienna Roller Derby host an A/B Doubleheader to close their season and year [EVENT]
  • Vienna Beasts (Vienna B) versus Liverpool Roller Birds B [FTS]
  • Vienna Oysters (Vienna A) versus Liverpool Roller Birds A [FTS]
• Gent, Belgium: Go-Go Gent host a single header event, as part of the Belgian Championships! [FTS tournament][EVENT]
  • Go-Go Gent versus Holy Wheels Menace (Liège A)
• Prague, Czech Republic: Prague City Roller Derby host their regular pre-Christmas open charity event. As always, Open To All genders, and to all skill levels (mins-passed). [EVENT]
  • Santas versus Grinch
• Aalborg, Denmark: Aalborg's Combat Bullies bring a festive double header to celebrate the season and a new venu [EVENT]
  • WFTDA-gender open-subs bout : All The Jingle Ladies versus The Fa La La La La Llamas
  • OTA open-subs Sevens game: Pain Deers versus The Tree Rex´s
• Helsinki, Finland: After their ramp work on Thursday, Helsinki Roller Derby host an end of year Tournament, the Best Hits 2018! [EVENT]
  • Helsinki ALpakka (Helsinki X) versus Åbo B-ajas (Dirty River B | Turku) [FTS]
  • Helsinki Juniors (Helsinki J) versus Vakaat aikuiset ( )
  • Åbo B-ajas versus HC Ässat (Kallio Rolling Rainbow + Lappeenranta)
  • Helsinki ALpakka versus HC Ässat
• Sat-Sun, Grenoble, France: The Cannibal Marmots host the next Championnat de France Nationale 1 fixture [FTS tournament][EVENT]
  • Cannibal Marmots (Grenoble) versus Faux Soyeuses (Lyon United)
  • Bloody Skulls (Marseille) versus DDCLM All Stars (Montpellier)
  • Les Harpies Braqueuses (Pibrac) versus La Horde (Orcet)
  • Cannibal Marmots versus Bloody Skulls
  • Faux Soyeuses versus DDCLM All Stars
  • Bloody Skulls versus Les Harpies Braqueuses
  • Cannibal Marmots versus La Horde
  • "Demo and signup for Handi-hockey"
• Sat-Sun, Saint-Etienne, France: The Green Harpies and Green Go host the "Green Winter Bootcamp", a two-day bootcamp with intermediate skater sessions (coached by Pepe Le Punch and Paris' YAS), NSO beginners sessions (coached by Paris' Polo Kiwi), and Referees intermediate sessions (coached by Paris' Watze).  [EVENT]
• Nancy, France: Wheel Spirit Roller Derby host a festive double header [EVENT]
  • Wheel Spirit (Nancy) versus Les Flèches Revêches (Dijon) [FTS]
  • Roller Derby Metz Club versus Les Baronnes von Schlass (Lille B) [FTS]
• Darmstadt, Germany: Riot Rollers Darmstadt host a Double Header, including a Bundesliga Division 2 bout [FTS tournament][EVENT]
  • Riot Rollers Darmstadt A vs Zombie Rollergirlz (Münster) [Bundesliga D 2]
  • Riot Rollers Darmstadt B vs Splatter Fairies (Marburg) [FTS]
• Frankfurt, Germany: Bembel Town Rollergirls host an OTA, Advanced-level, bootcamp, run by Glasgow Men's Roller Derby's Rosie Peacock and Optimus Grime! [EVENT]
• Stuttgart, Germany: Stuttgart Valley Roller Derby host a single header to finish the year [EVENT]
  • Bad Seeds (Stuttgart B) versus Bloody Wheels (Torino/Turin) [FTS]
• Padova, Italy: The Criminal Bullets co-host their regular "Festival of the Madonna" event with ASD Quadrato Meticcio Women's Football. This is a party event but also includes a debate on "women for sport, sport for women", and celebrates feminist sport in general. [EVENT]
• Vicenza, Italy: The Anguanas host a double header to finish their season,  with two games for their B team in one event! This is also being run as a Pride event. [EVENT]
  • The AnguanASS B-side (Vicenza B) versus Fearless Bruisers (Innsbruck) [FTS]
  • The AnguanASS B-side versus Bone-Crushing Hyenas (Bologna) [FTS]
• Heerlen, Netherlands: Roller Derby Liège and Les Vî-Kings host a Belgian Championships Men's tier fixture across the border... [FTS Tournament][EVENT]
  • Vî-Kings (Liège M) versus Manneken Beasts (Brussels M)
• Farsta, Sweden: The Royal Swedish Roller Derby host their final fixtures of the season, with both intra- and inter-league games [EVENT]
  • The Royal Brigade (Royal Swedish B | Stockholm) versus Nerike Knockouts (Örebro) [FTS]
  • Brass Knuckle Harlots versus The Slayer Sisters (home teams)
• Halmstad, Sweden: Chicks in Bowls Halmstad host a Meet Up at the Halmstad Skateboardkubb [EVENT]
• Sun, Aix-en-Provence, France: Les Amazones host a festive double-header "Star pass ou ça casse" [EVENT]
  • Les Amazones (Aix A) versus Lutéce Destroyeuses (Lutéce B | Paris) [FTS]
  • Les Valkyries (Aix B) versus Gap/Montpellier mixed team
• Sun, Angers, France: Anjou Derby Girls host Jingle Beigne, a Roller Derby Sevens tournament, with four festive teams [EVENT]
  • teams:
• Sun, Besançon, France: The Voodoo Vixens host a "Bootcamp à la fresh" - that is, a bootcamp aimed at pre-mins and rookie skaters [EVENT]
• Sun, L'Houmeau, France: Roller Derby La Rochelle host a triple-header event to end the year [EVENT]
  • Cheeky Dolls (La Rochelle A) versus UB (open subs team)
  • Sombres Héros ( ) versus Rillettes Chili Peppers (Le Mans) [FTS]
  • Charogne Maritime ( ) versus Mortale Condate (Rennes B) [FTS]
• Paris, France: les Gueuses de Pigalle host an open scrimmage event with extras for the season [EVENT]
• Sun, Arnhem, Netherlands: Arnhem Fallen Angels host a double header event  [EVENT]
  • Arnhem Fallen Angels versus Rockcity Rollers High Voltage (Eindhoven B) [FTS]
  • Black v White mixed teams
• Mon, Warsaw, Poland: Worst Warsaw's Open recruitment continues for interested potential members in any roles! [EVENT]
• Wed, Ostrava, Czech Republic: Trojhali Ostrava Roller Derby continue their open training and rolling recruitment [EVENT]

Pacific

Australia and New Zealand host mostly Christmas events, with Japan also hosting their regular seasonal scrim.

• Fri, North Hobart, TAS, Australia: Convict City Roller Derby League host the 7th and final home season bout for the year. [EVENT]
  • Debut skaters game?
• Fri, Tauranga, New Zealand: Moana Roller Derby host their Christmas Open Scrim, limited to WFTDA gender policy (and with Christmas costumes encouraged).  Donations to Tauranga Women's Refuge will be collected. [EVENT]
• Urangan, QLD, Australia: the Red Hot Chilli Rollers host a family Christmas skate party with "very special guest", and all the accoutrements of an Australian party (including sausage sizzle). [EVENT]
• Devonport, TAS, Australia: Van Diemen Rollers host "Wreck The Halls", a double header to bring the season to a close [EVENT]
  • United Tasmanian Roller Derby Mixed-gender (OTA) bout
  • Gangster Wrappers versus Ho Ho Hos (Van Diemen Home Teams bout)
• Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Chicks in Bowls Melbourne host the third of their Beginners Ramps Workshops. [EVENT]
• Albany, WA, Australia: Albany Roller Derby League end their season with a single header and fun [EVENT]
  • "Potluck" open-subs WFTDA-gender game
  • Food, bar, awards (end of year awards?)
• Sun, Gladstone, QLD, Australia: Gladstone Roller Derby host a relaxed season closer with BBQs heavily featured. [EVENT]
• Sun, Carrum Downs, VIC, Australia: South Sea Roller Derby host their Christmas Special edition of Derby & Chill, their regular multi-level open scrimmage and social skate events [EVENT]
  • Christmas-themed social skate
  • Red (no-contact) scrimmage
  • Amber (low-contact) scrimmage
  • Bouting full-contact scrimmage
• Sun, Zushi, Kanagawa, Japan: Yokosuka Sushi Rollers host the 2018 Season's Beatings, their annual scrimmage / mini-bouts event for the end of the year! Open to All genders [EVENT]

Latin America

There's derby in Costa Rica, Brazil and Argentina this weekend, at least (we find it hardest to keep up with events in Latin America, so we appreciate being told what we've missed].

• Thurs, San José, Costa Rica: Roller Derby Costa Rica host their Último Partido (Final game) for the year.  [EVENT]
  • Reindeer versus Elves themed bout.
• Sat+Sun, Río Gallegos, Argentina: Fénix Roller Derby host a two-day open bootcamp and scrimmage. The Bootcamp is on Saturday, the Scrimmage on the Sunday. [EVENT]
• Sun, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Buenos Aires Conspiracy, and Chat Noir, co-host a quadruple header! [EVENT]
  • Buenos Aires Conspiracy (Buenos Aires M)  vs Facones Galacticos (Buenos Aires M)
  • "Low calorie" mixed scrimmage
  • Space Jam (?) vs Buenos Aires Conspiracy
  • Chat Noir intraleague: Black versus White
• Sun, Blumenau, Brazil: the Iron Ladies of Blumenau host an exciting challenge bout [EVENT]
  • Iron Ladies (Blumenau) versus Brasil Roller Derby Masculino (Brasil M) !
• Sun, Santos, São Paulo, Brazil: Thunder Rats Derby Squad host a single header to close 2018 [EVENT] CANCELLED DUE TO RAIN STORMS
  • Thunder Rats (Santos, São Paulo) versus Sugar Loathe Roller Derby (Rio de Janeiro) [FTS]
• Sun, Morelia, Mexico: Roller Derby Morelia play Amour Roller Derby in a "friendly" [EVENT Flyer]

Africa and Middle East