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haha as spotted on our internal work website!
The world of women’s Roller Derby is fast, furious and fun – just ask referee Alex Tyler – also known as ‘Chemic-Al’.
Alex, 27, has been a referee with the Newcastle Roller Girls team, (most teams train up their own male referee), since September 2009, after learning to roller skate from scratch, passing the minimum skills practical test and passing a written test.
“My sister, ‘Juicy Lucy’, plays in Scotland for Edinburgh’s ‘Auld Reekie Roller Girls’ and she heard about the Newcastle Roller Girls starting up and I decided to go along. I had never skated before, so there was a lot of falling over at first, but now I can skate to a good standard and keep up with the play,†says Alex, a customer service agent at Newcastle Contact Centre.
The game, which is predominantly a female sport, sees two teams of five players skate on a track during two 30-minute sessions. Each team has four blockers and one jammer – the aim of the game is for the jammer to skate past the blockers as many times as possible in a series of two minute ‘jams’ and score a point for each opposition blocker that they pass legally.
Roller Derby, which originated in the United States in the 1930s, is the fastest growing extreme sport in the UK. Alex says he enjoys skating, travelling to different bouts, as well as the fact that teams are built from scratch and they get to choose their identities, do their own posters and design their own outfits.
Alex says: “Bouts can get quite heated but fighting is illegal and I've never seen any clashes during a bout. The refs do get shouted at and skaters can be penalised for this, but it would be at your own discretion.â€
The Newcastle Roller Girls regularly play to crowds of 600 spectators in away matches. The team is set to play its first home match in the Lightfoot Sports Centre in Newcastle on 5 March, and Alex hopes his colleagues will come and watch.
For more information visit the Newcastle Rollergirls website.
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The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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