First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 28, 1955

Mr. Lee Gordon, the American who has established himself in Sydney as a purveyor of a diversity of entertainment, last week at the Stadium presented roller derby skating, which the programme calls "an exhilarating sports cocktail."

It looks a brutal business - especially for girls to be taking part in. But people were asking: Are the bruisings, the eye-gougings, and the rough stuff with which the game abounds, skilfully faked for the added enjoyment of audiences?

We went to the hotel where the 28 skaters are quartered to find out.

There one pretty girl skater after another unblushingly displayed dentures worn to replace teeth knocked out in skating tournaments.

Other girls gave details of fractured limbs.

And not one of the 14 girls in the party is more than 24.

Some of them are married and one is a mother.

The girls were indignant at the suggestion that the roughness in roller derby skating is simulated.

Tore The Boss's Heart

And Mr. Murray Tannen, burly promotion manager of the team, said with emotion, "I have watched this sport for 20 years and I have seen injuries that have torn my heart. "Believe me these kids earn their dough the hard way."

Mr. Tannen called across the hotel lounge, "Here, Roger! Show the gentleman your fractured jaw and the helmet you have to wear to protect it."

And 23-year-old Roger Schroeder, of New York, obliged.

Whether Australian mothers will put their daughters into roller derby skating as a career is problematical, but the rewards are certainly tempting.

Said Mr. Tannen, "Most of these youngsters own their own cars. Not one of them earned less than £25 a week when they started in the game at 18. How's that for a boy or girl just leaving school?

"But it's chicken feed compared to what we pay really hot performers. Some of them pull in £135 a week before they are 35, and they are still good for another five years of skating."

George Vogt, aged 27, and Carol, his 22-year-old wife, are members of the team visiting Australia. Their joint income from skating is one that a Hollywood film star would not sniff at.

Vogt, son of a Tennessee policeman, threw up a job selling insurance to skate his way to fortune.

Another married couple in the team, Bob and Peggy Sunski, both aged 21, are earning far more than their fathers can hope to as truck driver and taxi manager respectively.

Bob Sunski originally intended to work in the building trade. He said, "This is better than carrying a hod. I can earn more money in an hour's skating than in a week of laying bricks."

His wife, asked what lured her into the roller derby business, said, "I was fascinated when I saw it for the first time on television."

Members of the team said "big" money, excitement, and so much travel that skaters are home only for a month in the year, is attracting many hundreds more recruits than can be enrolled.

Miss Joan Weston, 20, left school at 14, determined to become a roller derby queen, but was told girls are not accepted for training until they are 18.

"I had to wait four years," she said.

Ex-Model Stays Unscathed

"Mother does not altogether approve of it because of the injuries, but so far I have had only concussion and a few floor burns from falling down and sliding along the ground."

Another member of the party, Miss Loretta Behrens, 23, began work in a beauty parlour in New York.

Now, after six years in roller derby skating she is in the £130 a week bracket.

Her father is a wholesale fish merchant.

She said, "I only see him a few weeks in the year, as skating keeps me away from home."

Miss Dolores Doss, 24, forsook fashion modelling for skating, but plans to return to modelling "when I have had all the excitement want."

Miss Doss, whose skates spin money for her, also at the rate of £130 a week, is pretty with black curly hair, and appears to have come through six years of skating unscathed. But she said, "I have twice had my arms broken, and was out of the game for seven months with a broken jaw.

"Rough stuff is not encouraged by the promoters, and there is comparatively little of it when the men are playing, but, oh, the things we girls get up to.

"The men have better control of their tempers, but we girls just let fly and drag each other along by the hair when excitement gets the better of us.

"We are fined for these abuses of the rules. My pay packet has sometimes taken a nasty knock with fines."

A skater might be fined £10 for insubordination to the referee.

As the skaters whirled round the specially built stadium rink on practice runs, Mr. Elmer Anderson elaborated: "We know violence appeals to the spectators, of whom 75 per cent are usually women and girls, but we are trying to eliminate it by fines for rule infringements, "

We have also decided to throw out of the game players persistently guilty of kicking. "Also, we are putting an end to the fighting that breaks out among our women players.

Allowed To Use Elbows

"The rules allow a skater to use elbows and knees to force a way through to the front, but only in a prescribed manner.

"Baseball is losing ground in America to roller Derby skating and we aim to make our sport as clean as baseball."

Efforts to get a Sydney doctor to be in attendance during the Stadium performances had not succeeded when the first matches were played on Friday night. However, ambulance men were present.

The services of Mr. E. McQuillan, boxing trainer, were also secured.

In America a doctor is engaged for every performance.

Said Mr. Anderson laconically, "We usually average two or three broken legs a month, but there are few quitters."

Majority of casualties appear to be among the girls.

When we asked 20-year-old Miss Bobbie Rayburn why she risked possible disfigurement, she replied, "I worked that one out and decided that it was preferable to the drudgery of a typist's desk …and the money is good."

To "stay in the money" skaters have to stay fit.

The 28 members of the team now in Sydney are forbidden to be out of bed after 2 a.m.

The "mother" of the team is Mrs. Jerry Murray, wife of a skater and mother of a seven-year-old son, Michael.

First published in the Sydney Morning Herald on August 28, 1955