At Pier Pressure in Southend Saturday we missed the first bout skate out but surely the Sirens' A team's dough boy must have won despite mixed team Masters of the Derbyverse coaches YT and Philthy winning appreciative laughter from the crowd for their super-heroine capes ... wouldn't it be nice if programmes gave the home leagues of mixed team skaters?  The Masters of etc went evens stevens against Sirens B until three quarters through the bout when jammer majors hurt them.  We were impressed by the jamming of Seaside Siren Fort Knocks, despite being of slightish build she seemed to just throw herself at the blocker wall.

In the main bout it was the first public derby for the Wolverhampton Honour Rollers and as so often in derby the 236-87 score line didn't reflect that they weren't outclassed and they will get better.

The Romsey Town Rollerbillies had their first home bout Saturday in a large Cambridge sports hall on the first floor?! and universally painted a green which though it complimented the Billies uniform gave everything an underwater look.  For the first

jams the blockers lined up on the jammers line (as is the present fashion) with resulting heaving masses of humanity looking a bit like man derby.  The scoreboard failed to work for most of the first half making it hard to follow things and requiring announcer Dan Gleibitz Mossman to make length of the hall dashes to confirm the score.  In the end the Brighton Rockers beat the Billies 304-60 and the badger ladies were absolute sweeties.

Rather like Benhall when you say Houghton Regis most nearthecoasters ask Where's that?, but the satnav found it alright (unlike last time) for Co-Eduskation on Sunday.  A mixed bout in both gender and league but without the spectacular height differences of Grantham.  What did for Team Black (they lost 106-206) was not brutal blokey blocking but the ankle wrenching sideways cuts of Team White's male jammers.  Nice to see Team Black's blocker's occasionally getting involved on their power jams unlike the present fashion for the jammer's blockers to stay out of the way.  Presumably just because of life's randomness lots of official timeouts in the second half and a ref unable to escape from the pa's cables without assistance.  Cracking stuff Gromit!

The Meres Leisure Centre is a cold war concrete bunker set in a barren industrial wilderness on the outskirts of Grantham where you have to pay for more than two sachets of salt with your chips, living proof that councils can't do fun ... but by some oversight last Saturday they'd allowed the Lincolnshire Bombers to provide fun on turbo boost inside with the hosts beating but not drubbing the Birmingham Blitz and an outstanding bout from the Lincolnshire Rolling Thunder the men's team against a mixed (in both league and gender) team.  The bout had only one point in it at the start of the final jam!  Inevitably the gentlemen tend to be bigger than the ladies but this puts their shoulders in the wrong place for blocking so things tend to cancel out.