requires speed, strength, agility, quick-thinking, teamwork and bravery, and I want you to forget everything you've ever read about it. It's relatively uncomplicated (to watch, in any case), it has the ability to attract huge crowds even at its current hyper-amateur level and it showcases excellent examples of female might and sporting prowess for girls and young women who at present are at best an afterthought in the team and contact sport conversation. It is, however, dogged by misconception and misrepresentation in its media portrayal, and this would have to be fixed or at least improved in order to ramp up its chances of Olympic inclusion. The media issues range from basic practical misunderstandings and a lack of research (see, for instance 'basically a series of high speed muggings on skates' from the Independent's report on the first UK based WFTDA tournament) to a tedious preoccupation with appearances. The bafflingly innacurate description of the rules and aims is somewhat at odds with reportage of men's contact sports -- I find it difficult to imagine a sports journalist describing men's rugby as 'basically a series of homoerotic incidents with liedowns' -- but the main problem to my mind is the evident assumption that women are interested solely in the look of things. The endemic frippery-fixation in its reportage includes obsessive descriptions of the piercings, tattoos and dyed hair of the players and spectators (an irrelevance), the lists of nicknames that we play under (hardly a new thing in sport ) and