This weekend (and the week leading to it) is pretty dominated by the world's largest annual Roller Derby event, Rollercon. With people travelling across the world to attend, the schedule elsewhere is a little sparse, but there are still exciting things happening.

We've also included a bonus section in this week's roundup highlighting sessions at Rollercon itself which we think are either interesting, or important, or both.

This list was updated on Thursday 18th to include late announced bouts on Sunday in Mexico and Argentina

The rules are, as usual: highlights limited to 1 event per country, with an "extra" event allowed for a different kind of fixture (so, 1 tournament and 1 bootcamp), or if they involve Scottish leagues (since we are the Scottish Roller Derby Blog). Other notability might also allow the extra event - great posters, notable teams, etc. (League birthdays may count as "special" enough, at our discretion ;) )

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

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In the last few days, the brackets and confirmed attendees for the WFTDA post-season events - WFTDA Division 1 Playoffs, and the WFTDA Continental Cups - have been announced. This year continues the trend of increasing "worldwide" participation of teams in the post-season - which also means increasing average costs for the sport!

Whilst we would like to congratulate all the teams on making Playoffs or CC, this article isn't just to celebrate them (even though we made a map to drive home the distribution)!

We thought that providing some hard-ish numbers on costs might be useful, so we did a bit of calculation to feed discussion. More after the break...

Our non-North-American teams for WFTDA Playoffs and Continental Cup, coloured by event.

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This weekend's highlights are back to our 1 update format as this is a little quieter. There's a bunch of exciting "summer" events on, though, which we should highlight up here: in the UK, Eastbourne Extreme takes derby outside and to the coast for a 2 day mixed tournament; in France, Saint-Gratien once again hosts the pan-France Tournament of 6 Regions; and in Bundaberg, Australia, the 2019 SKATE of Emergency continues to raise funds for emergency services.

(We'd also like to highlight the next "Un sol para lxs oficialxs", raising travel funds for Argentinian officials to support Roller Derby across the country; and on a different note ALL-IN's Short Track Experiment event in Leeds, exploring the new ruleset and how it might help to sustain & develop the sport.)

This article amended on Tuesday for two late announced fixtures in Spain and Mexico.

The rules are, as usual: highlights limited to 1 event per country, with an "extra" event allowed for a different kind of fixture (so, 1 tournament and 1 bootcamp), or if they involve Scottish leagues (since we are the Scottish Roller Derby Blog). Other notability might also allow the extra event - great posters, notable teams, etc. (League birthdays may count as "special" enough, at our discretion ;) )

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

Read more…

Last month, Italy's largest Roller Derby tournament, Skate Im Ring (SKIR) held its Golden Edition, as always in Bolzano. Luckily for us, New Town Roller Derby's Hazzard was attending, and has been good enough to provide us with this guest article!

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On the 22nd and 23rd of June, 8 Italian roller derby teams and a swathe of officials had arrived at Arena Ritten, just outside of Bolzano in the North of Italy. They were to participate in Skate Im Ring (SKIR) Golden Edition [link to Facebook] hosted by the Alp’n Rockets.

The fantastic Arena Ritten, host venue for SKIR 2019.

The weekend was the 4th edition of the SKIR and was its biggest edition so far. The tournament consisted of a day of single-period ranking games and a day of full games. The teams were split into two groups and then seeded to go head to head with their counterparts in the other group.

Meeting with two of the organisers of SKIR, Betty Burp and Billi, we chatted about the previous editions of SKIR.

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This weekend's highlights are back to our two update format.

The rules are, as usual: highlights limited to 1 event per country, with an "extra" event allowed for a different kind of fixture (so, 1 tournament and 1 bootcamp), or if they involve Scottish leagues (since we are the Scottish Roller Derby Blog). Other notability might also allow the extra event - great posters, notable teams, etc. (League birthdays may count as "special" enough, at our discretion ;) )

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

There's not one, but two national championships decided this weekend, as the finals of the Finnish National Championships and the first ever ARDE Spanish National Championships both fall here.

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

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This is the Sunday addendum edition of the highlights, for 30 June.

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

This is a scrimmage-heavy update, but we approve of open scrims, so we're good with that.

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

This weekend's highlights are back to our two update format.

The rules are, as usual: highlights limited to 1 event per country, with an "extra" event allowed for a different kind of fixture (so, 1 tournament and 1 bootcamp), or if they involve Scottish leagues (since we are the Scottish Roller Derby Blog). Other notability might also allow the extra event - great posters, notable teams, etc. (League birthdays may count as "special" enough, at our discretion ;) )

We've broken our rule slightly for Germany this weekend, as it's important not to miss the Mine Monsters' birthday game, but also it's a good weekend for the German Bundesliga in Erfurt. And as usual there's so much stuff in France, we're giving them two entries for two two-day events...

There's also two firsts this weekend; the first ever Tasmanian Tournament kicks off in Australia, and the first ever Norwegian National Tournament (and Championship) is this weekend in Sadnes!

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

Read more…

This is the Sunday addendum edition of the highlights, for 23 June.

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

There's an unprecedented number of Sunday tournaments in France on the 23rd, so we've picked two of them (the most fun, and the most "international") as a representation. There's actually 5 in total!

There's also one Monday event in the list, so watch out for that in Edinburgh, especially if you're interested in the Officiating side of the sport.

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

Bairn City Rollers started off their 2019 and their champs campaign in the best way possible (you can read more about that here) . Their two wins in their first two Champs games saw them sit third in their group with six points despite having played one less game than the two teams above them, who had played three each. Their next two games came against those two teams: first they took on North Wales Mens and then T&F: Inglorious B*Stars. Both opponents took the wins in very hard fought games ending their 2019 Champs season 1st and 2nd in the group, 2 weeks ago.

Whilst those two teams have finished their champs season, the other teams in the group still have one more game and each team still has everything to play for. The last game day of Tier 2 North takes place on Scottish ground, with BCR hosting this fantastic battle at Grangemouth Sports Complex on the 29th of June.

This double header could not have been set up more perfectly for the final set of games, as each match is a decider and will see the teams involved fighting for their final position against their opponent. Hosts BCR will be taking on The Inhuman League, with the winner of that game finishing 3rd in the group and the loser coming 4th. Whilst the other game will see Knights of Oldham play Teesside Skate Invaders, with the loser unfortunately ending up with the wooden spoon for the tier, and facing potential relegation.

Both games are shaping up to be quite a close battle as by their results so far each are evenly matched. So every team will be pulling out all the stops to get that final win in this years champs competition to finish above their opponents.

Doors are at 1.15pm and tickets are only £5 on the door, find out more and keep up to date on the Facebook event page https://en-gb.facebook.com/events/2402082363156371/

This weekend's highlights are back to our two update format.

The rules are, as usual: highlights limited to 1 event per country, with an "extra" event allowed for a different kind of fixture (so, 1 tournament and 1 bootcamp), or if they involve Scottish leagues (since we are the Scottish Roller Derby Blog). Other notability might also allow the extra event - great posters, notable teams, etc. (League birthdays may count as "special" enough, at our discretion ;) )

This is a good weekend for tournaments - with two tournaments of interest to us in the USA (ECDX, where a lot of European, as well as US, teams try to get last-minute games for WFTDA eligibility requirements; and Hawai'i's Big Island Brawl, as Okinawa are there); but also two National or quasi-National tournaments in Europe (Spain's first ever Division 2 playoffs, and the sort-of-Italian-national-tournament Skake Im Ring).

In a bid to make this list as useful as possible, we've avoided links to Facebook except where noted. (Links to Teams are to non-Facebook resources - Instagram, or actual team pages - we'd strongly recommend that Teams get themselves an actual webpage [we can help host one if you need help]).

Locations are roughly organised East-West (with things before the weekend out sequence at the start).

Read more…