Right where I want to be

Rightio I finally found out why I'm still having lingering pain in my knee, there's scar tissue in there. My physio has started breaking it up during my sessions with her so it's painful but my knee is starting to hurt a little less which is a good thing.

With my knee still giving me grief there's no skating to talk about but I've discovered that the saying absence makes the heart grow fonder to ring true. Before this last freak injury I admitted that I was battling the meh's with derby but staying involved with derby in some sort of capacity while I was injured helped me realise how much I missed and still wanted it.

Last Sunday we had a bout condition scrimmage against S2D2's B team the Bewoks. I still haven't scrimmaged with my own league yet since the first knee injury I had months ago so I was NSOing. I was penalty box tracker. It was such a close bout in terms of the scoreline, real edge of the seat stuff, so much so that I was caught up watching the bout and forgot to release Apple from the penalty box so she served a longer time than she was supposed. Yep I fucked up there so I paid a lot more attention to my job after that.

Some decisions by our guys on the track baffled me but as an NSO I had to keep my mouth shut. Mostly I was beaming from ear to ear. I noticed a change in our guys. We do have some recent additions in the way of transfers which have been great additions to the squad, not to mention those stepping up in rankings and making bouting debuts left, right and centre. From what I could see there was more communication on the track and they were working a lot tighter on the track and not leaving the sort of gaps that crucified us in 5x5 this year. The biggest difference was the feel good factor on the bench. There was lots of encouragement when someone did something well on the track and lots of talking. It feels like things are on the up ever since the bout against Inner West at 5x5 which is great to see, hopefully they can continue that at ERRD.

There was a period in the second half where our guys started picking up a few penalties but for the most part it felt as though the penalty rates were a lot lower than what they were for most of the 5x5. It was the best I'd ever seen Lola bout. I was fangirling Cherry as much as I do Jilla at the NRDL bouts, she was effective, destructive and just utterly amazing. The likes of Butters and Betty have made ridiculously high levels of improvement and prove what hard work and dedication achieve, they're amazing the both of them.

At the end of scrimmage Rex handed me a questionnaire to fill out about our home teams for next year. a) we're having home teams next year and b) I'll be involved like actually bouting :D One of the questions on the form was who do you think you work best with? Rex said I couldn't put Jilla as the answer, cheeky fucker! If Jac was still with us I would have put her name down every day of the week. Truth is with all my injuries I haven't been able to form another partnership on the track with anyone because of all the down time I've had.

I've never hidden the fact that I love NRDL but nothing would make me more prouder than lining up on the track for my league whether it's home teams or the kazi's. I'm itching to get back to training on Sunday and work my way up to put myself into contention for bouting.

My original plan this weekend was to fly up to Brisbane to watch the Dames bout against NBR but since I won both Brig and Jilla's jackets in the auction the money that was supposed to cover the costs of this weekend went into the jackets instead. There's still ERRD and their bout on the 12th. Instead I'll probably watching the WSR vs BMRDL bout instead. That's the beauty of derby there's usually no shortage of bouts to watch!