Derby Deeds Podcast™ – Episode #14
- July 30th, 2010
- Posted in Podcasts
- By Megatron
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It’s ROLLERCON!! Episode 14 is a long one, as we talk to Hurt Reynolds & Justice Feelgood Marshall “live” from Rollercon!
This week we talk about a TON of stuff, including a few of the bouts that happened over the weekend, Hellarad’s dream team and how it makes us want to form our own, and the upcoming WFTDA tournament schedule!
We also sit down with Hurt & Justice to talk about the biggest topic in derby today – The “SLOW GAME”.
You can download it directly by right clicking on the link below and choosing “Save Link As”, or just click to stream it.
Derby Deeds Podcast – Episode #14
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This weeks cast:
- Jason Megatron Burrows
- Sheeza Brickhouse
- Hurt Reynolds
- Justice Feelgood Marshall
- and Pitchit!
THANK YOU HURT for saying what I’ve been saying: slow skating should not be lumped together with clockwise skating. I can appreciate skillful use of slow skating, but clockwise skating just pisses me off. WFTDA, please take a cue from the WORD banked track rules and make clockwise skating illegal.
Nooooooooooo!!!!!!!
That’s all I got.
Gotta go with pitchit on this one.
Same here. With all due respect to banked track, the less that flat track emulates it, the better. They’re two separate beasts and I want to see it remain that way.
The clockwise skating to force a track cut is an easy addition to the rulebook (although, I’ve argued that it’s already in the rulebook and still believe it is). Make it positional blocking (because it is) and since it’s illegal to block while skating clockwise, make it a major. The jammer still has to come inbounds behind the blocker that knocks her out so the ref doesn’t have to pay attention to the exact spot on the track that she went out but it means that blockers won’t skate clockwise unless it’s worth it to take a major.
Ooh, I’m excited that I got mentioned, and disappointed that I wasn’t able to get in the conversation here earlier.
But I think that Hurt and Justice really nailed what I was trying to get at. I’m not against the slow game – I’m all for the teams slowing down and even stopping the pack. Don’t unnecessarily restrict the range of available strategies team can use. I’m just not a fan of clockwise skating – I think the “nails on the chalkboard” description is apt, and I think there are some safety considerations that come into play here.
I appreciate that trying to track the location where a skater went out of play in the case that the blocker skates backwards is difficult, and I’m not trying to make the sport more complicated (I think it’s already too complicated and needs simplification as is), but it’s about discouraging clockwise skating and ways to abuse the rules. The example presented about a jammer knocking the other out, and then skating clockwise is a great example of an edge case that might be awesome to see once, but loses the novelty quickly to spoil things. Imagine something similar – a team has a 4-3 blocker advantage, knocks the other team’s jammer out of bounds, then starts running the pack clockwise as fast as they can. That’s awesome to see once, and obnoxious afterwards.
Eliminating that route to keep someone out of bounds doesn’t eliminate strategic positioning – a blocker can still hit the brakes and force another player to go backwards (depending on where they stopped) or wait for the 20 feet, but the pack has to be moving to take proper advantage. If the pack’s not moving, then that opportunity is given up.
Derbytron’s suggestion – that skating backwards to force a cut is positional blocking – is a great alternative to mine. It keeps to the spirit of the rules, allows for flexibility in play, but stops it at what seems to be to be the natural dividing line between fair play and rule abuse, the latter being the second the blocker starts moving clockwise.