Check out our very own Rudyard Crippling’s brand new blog ‘Earning My Stripes’ on his ongoing journey in becoming a roller derby ref.

Here’s an excerpt:

I jumped at this chance to join the team, quickly blowing my hard earned commission cheque to get my start up gear together, while attempting to learn how to skate on my newly purchased set of quads, which would lead to a large amount of falling over and carving myself up on the concrete quad, which we were using for practice, while at the same time working on creating my derby alter ego, which after countless failed attempts and a whole bunch of crossed out ideas on the fridge white board, I finally came up with my derby name “Rudyard Crippling”, even though it seemed that the only person that was being crippled was myself, but the name stuck and it’s a name which I have now carried across as a Ref.

Be sure to keep checking in on Crippling’s ‘derby misadventures’.