MRDWC Takes 1 Year Postponement

With the increasing certainty that travel and contact restrictions to control the COVID-19 pandemic will last for months in some areas, the Derby timetable is experiencing effects further and further into the year.

Yesterday, the WFTDA announced that they were dramatically slimming down the "post-Season" for this year, and the effects continue today.

In the last hour, the Men's Roller Derby World Cup announced that they had decided to take the sad step of cancelling the current date for the 2020 MRDWC in St Louis, in favour of a booking some time in 2021. As this is a postponement, we assume that the MRDWC 2021 will be in the same place, and hopefully will have the same teams... just in a different year.

Of course, with the near-global hiatus in team training, not to say opportunities for Officials to keep up their practice, no-one can say what Roller Derby will look like even in a year's time. Roller Derby is also sensitive to non-sport specific issues which affect all volunteer communities - the expected increase in unemployment, and other economic impacts, is likely to affect the sport worldwide.

On the converse side, the extra time and delay may also allow some teams which dropped out of contention for the 2020 MRDWC time to regroup and reapply. MRDWC is being open about allowing such teams an opportunity to rejoin the competition for its 2021, if they wish to.

The full text of the MRDWC announcement is below:

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Friends,

We have come to a decision. We will be postponing the St. Louis MRDWC indefinitely, with a target date of March/April 2021.

Our reasoning: First, no one wants to cancel. We all want to skate. This is our best option for doing so.

Second, although the venue is perfect for our purposes, they cannot yet commit to a date. They will let us know in a few months, which is why we need to leave the date open for now. We may be able to announce the date before July, and indeed we hope so. Our host is working with the venue to make this happen.

We hope that this offers you the ability to plan, to recover costs or move bookings, and to refocus on keeping yourselves and yours healthy and safe. The host hotel will cancel all bookings for this event in a few days for those who booked with them.

See you all around the track...

http://mrdwc.com/mrdwc-postponed/