After a second exciting day of Group bouts, here's what our table looked like:

	GROUP 1	GROUP 2	GROUP 3	GROUP 4	GROUP 5	GROUP 6	GROUP 7	GROUP 8
A	NEW ZEALAND 3	FRANCE 3	SWEDEN 3	FINLAND 3	AUSTRALIA 3	ENGLAND 3	CANADA 2	USA 2
B	NORWAY 2	SWITZERLAND 0	WEST INDIES 2	SCOTLAND 2	ITALY 0	GERMANY 1	DENMARK 0	PUERTO RICO 0
C	SOUTH AFRICA 0	BRAZIL 2	JAPAN 0	COLOMBIA 1	BELGIUM 2	SPAIN 0	ARGENTINA 1	THE NETHERLANDS 1
D	WALES 1	PORTUGAL 1	CHILE 1	MEXICO 0	GREECE 1	IRELAND 2

As a correction from yesterday, it appears that the labelling on the official schedule confused us: any team not in the top 2 in their group pass through to the Consolation round, with one game each (except those in Group 7 and 8 who get two games, as there's only one of them for each Group, and they got less Group games in total). Our UK and Japan time schedules are now updated to reflect that fact.

So, on to the Derby: As is often the case for the second round of groups, most of the really tight games were in the second day. That said, we started with Finland, Australia and England getting the blow-outs that we expected against Mexico, Greece and Ireland (not to say the latter are poor teams, but the former are really exceptional).

Fighting it out for the second place in their group brought grit to the Switzerland v Brasil bout, with Brasil just pulling out the edge in an exciting bout (one for the archives if you missed it). While West Indies won both their bouts (against Japan and Chile) to put themselves into the second position in Group 3, neither of their opponents disgraced themselves, with Japan showing how much they'd learned just in the previous day of play, and Chile holding on until the very last jam!

On to Scotland:

As we mentioned yesterday, Scotland needed to beat Colombia in order to make it through to the Elimination round. While Colombia had periods of control on the track, taking lead jammer mostly when Scotland had a blocker deficit on track, and both teams suffered some penalty issues (there were jams for both teams where they had to cope with having only a single blocker on track), Scotland's excellent pack work, lead by Maclean, Skinner, Parry, Cider, and Davis and Kerr, told in the end ('Splat' Kerr developed a particular skill for knocking Colombian jammers out of attempted apex jumps). Despite a tired O'Carroll and her Colombian opponent spending the second-last jam taking two trips to the penalty box each, in general the Scottish jamming was also excellent, with Gow, Rogue, Hyndman and O'Carroll all able to trust their blockers, and get on with dedicating their skill to scoring. In the end, the balance of jammer penalties, and the superior track control when there was no pack deficit against them, told in Scotland's favour.

Scotland will play the mighty Australia on Track 1 at 9pm UK time today.

Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland and England, the other teams in the tournament featuring Scottish skaters, also made it through to the Elimination stage. Belgium, Netherlands and Ireland, being 2nd in their groups, face tough 1st Group place opponents today in Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, while England, having easily taken their 1st Group place, have the West Indies as their first opponents.

Match ups in the second stage of the elimination are to be decided by the overall score difference after the first round, so even a close game could make all the difference (for the winner) for a better draw in the Quarter Final later on in the day.

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After the final Group bouts, the schedule managed to sneak in a few more special games: the first two Consolation bouts, with Colombia triumphing over Greece, and Spain taking their first win of the tournament over South Africa. We suspect that many of the viewers were tuned into the Vagine Regime Expo bout on Track 3, however, where PanGina pulled ahead from a close half time score versus Queerope to take a commanding win in the second period.

The day concluded with another Expo of top skill, the Team USA "Stars and Stripes" bout, where Stars took the close win against Stripes 134:129.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2014  (40 MINUTE BOUTS) CONSOLATION BOUTS ARE FULL 60 MINUTE BOUTS

	TRACK 1 (ROLL-LINE TRACK)	TRACK 2 (BLOOD & THUNDER TRACK)		TRACK 3 (TBD TRACK)
3:00PM	FINLAND (312) VS. MEXICO (38)	AUSTRALIA (449) VS. GREECE (17)	3:10PM	ENGLAND (329) VS. IRELAND (50)
4:20PM	NORWAY (219) VS. SOUTH AFRICA (80)	SWITZERLAND (108) VS. BRAZIL (120)	4:30PM	WEST INDIES (235) VS. JAPAN (70)
5:40PM	NEW ZEALAND (250) VS. WALES (60)	FRANCE (310) VS. PORTUGAL (36)	5:50PM	SWEDEN (296) VS. CHILE (39)
7:00PM	SCOTLAND (230) VS. COLOMBIA (53)	ITALY (86)VS. BELGIUM (273)	7:10PM	GERMANY (216) VS. SPAIN (70)
8:20PM	DENMARK (85) VS. ARGENTINA (202)	PUERTO RICO (154) VS. NETHERLANDS (209)	8:30PM	WEST INDIES (104) VS. CHILE (100)
10:00PM	CONSOLATION 4 (Colombia 305) VS. 5 (Greece 136)	CONSOLATION 6 (South Africa 143) VS. 1 (Spain 227)	10:00PM	VAGINE REGIME EXPO BOUT
00:00 (MIDNIGHT)	TEAM USA STARS VS. STRIPES EXPO