“Chapter 16

"How many big guys?" Coach Robsson asked in amazement as the opposition set up for the kick-off. Da Hui were playing Undreleague Athletical, a team of chaos renegades coached by ineptmule, and although Robsson thought he knew what to expect from chaos teams, he'd never seen one quite like this. "They have an ogre, a troll and a minotaur! On the same team! At the same time!"
"They also have a goblin," Ebeneezer pointed out, as if that might swing the balance back in Da Hui's favour.
"And," Robsson added, catching sight of a familiar figure stalking the opposition's dugout. "They've hired Ugroth Bolgrot as well. We are so dead."
"We are so dead!" the two zombie cheerleaders chorussed, thinking this was a good thing. They jumped up and down and waved their pom-poms about in an effort to look alluring. Robsson swore to himself there and then that they would be replaced with elves before the week was out.

The renegades kicked off and Coach Robsson waited for the inevitable crunch of broken bones and the squelch of flesh coming apart from the aforementioned bones. Instead he heard cheers from the crowd. Tobias had the ball and was running it down the side, with plenty of cover. But the renegades had it covered. They closed off the route to the endzone, took care of the defensive pocket - which suddenly looked somewhat threadbare - and came towards Tobias with the speed (and smell) of a runaway night-soil cart. But it was a trick. Tobias had lured almost the whole of the opposing team across to his side of the pitch and with a quick spin he reversed direction, sprinted back across midfield and threw a beautiful quick pass to Berengariax who was waiting to run it in unopposed.

It was the perfect start. But now the Athleticals lined up with a front line that could have made a respectable outer wall for an average-sized castle. And there was Bolgrot and his chainsaw right behind them.
"We are so dead," Robsson told Ebeneezer.
"We are so dead!" the cheerleaders moaned.
Now came the sounds Robsson had been dreading. Pow! Splat! Ooof! The Da Hui front line was crumbling, zombies and golems unceremoniously upended and turfed into the dirt. And then the other sound Robsson had been dreading...GRRRRRRRRR. Bolgrot ran forward, chainsaw raised and charged towards the prone form of Number Eight. The referee blew his whistle. Bolgrot paused, looked at the referee, then at the golem lying helpless beneath him.
"Ah, what the hell," he muttered and brought the chainsaw down anyway. The ref blew his whistle again and Bolgrot shrugged and wandered off, his pockets bulging with his match fee, to find his next employer. Number Eight clambered to his feet, dusted himself down and adjusted his helmet. Robsson let out the breath he'd been holding for he past two minutes.
Meanwhile, the game was continuing, and for the Athleticals, it was going from bad to worse. Enraged to the point of frenzy, their minotaur charged forward and hurled himself at Mortimer and with a sickening squelch the two of them went down. But it was the minotaur who came off worst. For a brief moment it looked as if he'd actually killed himself, but a slight wave of the arm as he was carried off showed that he was still alive - though not in any state that would see him returning to the Bloodbowl field any time soon. Mortimer was knocked senseless, but as Ebeneezer pointed out, that was nothing new. He would be back.
But now the renegades were in no position to do much about the relentless Da Hui surge. A second touchdown came almost straight away, and after a frantic few minutes of pounding, which saw several more chaos players carried off the field, the undead scored a third. Robsson went wild. The cheerleaders went wild. The fans went wild.

And it took the whole of the half-time break for Robsson to calm himself down, and then calm his players down.
"Don't get carried away," he warned them. "This is amazing stuff you're doing out there. Keep it up. But don't get complacent." That part of the team that was actually paying attention looked confused. More confused than normal. "Cocky," Robsson explained. "Don't get cocky. I've seen better teams than us throw away a 3-0 lead by being stupid and cocky. Remember, they've still got two of their big guys left."
"And that sneaky little goblin," Ebeneezer added.

But while Robsson had been calming his players down, the cheerleaders had been doing the exact opposite to the crowd. They were screaming and pushing each other and throwing their empty ale jugs onto the pitch, and just as the referee blew his whistle, a particularly rowdy group surged forward and piled onto the field, swamping the players and bringing the game to an immediate stand-still. Robsson was pleased to see that the fans were all from the Da Hui stand, and doubly pleased to see the mess they made of the Althletical players. As the game continued, the renegades could do nothing except pick themselves up slowly and look on helplessly as Da Hui scored their fourth touchdown.

And by then the fight had gone out of the renegades and they looked ready to give up and go home - all except the tiny dynamo of a goblin in the backfield who refused to give up without a fight. He grabbed the ball and screamed for one of the big guys to throw him downfield. He ran to the ogre, but the ogre simply looked at him with a confused grin on his face. In desperation, the goblin dodged in and out between the legs of half of the undead team in order to get himself across to the troll who picked him up, and then carefully put him back down again. The goblin screamed in frustration, and would probably have run the entire half of the pitch on his own had it not been for a timely smack on the back of the head from Kornelius. This allowed Celandril to scoop up the ball and pass it to Tobias, who ran it down and passed it to Jeremiah, who was already standing in the endzone waiting.


* * *


Coach Robsson wasn't sure what was more impressive, the 5-0 win, or the fact that Da Hui had made four successful passes. They weren't quite on a par with some of his wood elves, but they were certainly heading in the right direction. Tobias was now officially the team's passer, and several of the other players had shown some truly impressive skills. Da Hui was a team to be proud of.

If only they could be that good in the water though. Their surfing was still terrible, with only Celandril showing any real talent on a board. Berengariax was fine if she was allowed to go on all-fours, and the ghouls could at least get their boards out past the breakers now, but the golems were just too heavy and slow, the wights too proud to swap out their ancestral armour for baggies, and as for the zombies... well, the less said there the better. Still, Robsson thought as he picked his next wave and began to paddle furiously towards the shore, at least he had no one else competing for his waves.”