It's fast, frantic and a little bit dangerous but such is the growing popularity of Roller Derby in the UK a new league has been formed in Croydon.

Dionne Hogan began Croydon Roller Derby at the end of September and already has 18 women signed up for the sport that certainly isn't for the faint hearted.

Two teams of five skate around an arena with a points scorer who has to try and get past the other team to win the match, the problem being the other team has designated blockers to try and knock her and the rest of her team to the ground or send them flying into the barriers around the side.

"It's a full contact sport and can be somewhat dangerous but the risks are really worth it," said Hogan who used to compete with the London Rockin Rollers.

"The gist of the game is you have a points scorer on each team and they try and score as many points as they can in two minutes.

"You also have blockers in your team to stop their points scorer from getting past you while trying to clear their blockers out the way for your points scorer to get through.

"Each team has 14 girls but only five skaters racing at once and the matches last for an hour with the points scorer changing after every two minutes.

"It's quite fast and frantic and bumps and bruises are the most common injury but we have had things like knee and elbow fractures and torn ligaments."

In America, the sport is so popular Drew Barrymore just starred in a film about it and Hogan hopes she will soon have enough members to start holding matches.

"Players even get paid over there but it is getting more popular here," said Dionne.

"There are more and more teams forming and my old team even went over to Germany to play a side over there.

"Croydon Roller Derby is a league but we only have enough members for one team at the minute but as the numbers build up hopefully we can start having matches.

"I think maybe about February we will be up for a few friendlies as the girls are getting really good really quickly."

The league meets twice a week, once at St George's Walk on Monday nights at 7pm and once at Monks Hill Sports Centre on Wednesdays at 7pm.

Email croydonrollerderby@live.co.uk to get involved.