“This was a game of two halves!

Oh come on, I'm allowed to say that when the World Cup is going on.

But actually, it's also appropriate in this case. I was going to say the first half just went from bad to worse for me, but in fact it started out so badly, there was no worse for it to get. A blitz to clear a path down the sidelines was thwarted with a POW/skull, then my tree took root, then the pushed away one of his multiple block victims and double skulled the second, failed his PRO roll and stunned himself. This left the ball somewhat exposed on the far side of the field, just ahead of where PeteW had set up most of his team...almost as if he knew it was going to happen :-)

There then followed five turns of mess and destruction - the mess was all mine, as I continued to fail nearly everything, and the destruction was all PeteW, who was making the most of the opportunity to dismantle my team with careless abandon. He began by putting the thrower into the KO box (which I suppose, with hindsight, was probably a good thing) and then picking off whoever seemed to be the biggest threats to the safety of his own players....or whoever just happened to be standing next to him at the time. It was brutal and painful and frustrating, and when he scored on turn six and claimed I was putting him under too much pressure to continue delaying, either he was playing a different match to me, or else the delusion fairies were having their wicked way with him, because the level of pressure I was putting him under was, quite frankly, risible.

Still, it was nice to be given the opportunity to get back onto offence, even if there was no real point as the thrower stayed KO and there was very little (very, very, very, little) chance of me getting the ball anywhere near the Superheroes' endzone. In fact, what actually happened was that the Superheroes scored again, to bring the half to a somewhat painful, incredibly frustrating and particularly humiliating close.

And, of course, I had to kick back to them to start the second half, so they went and scored again.

But at least by now PeteW was sure of the win and was running his scores in without stalling, so I was back in possession by my turn 2. And the thrower was back!

This time I didn't mess about with blocks, I just got in there and threw the pass straight away, then worried about how to score afterwards. Now, I may be wrong here, and doing my daredevil offence an injustice, but I suspect PeteW had dropped down from full-throttle to cruise-control by this point, because it seemed kind of easy to score. All I had to do was throw the long bomb over a few potential intercepters and I had a wardancer close to his endzone, strangely unmarked.

Well, never one to kick a gift horse in the teeth, I scored. After that I put up something resembling a reasonable defence on the Superheroes' next drive. I didn't stop them scoring, but I did leave one of them with a smashed hip. And once I'd tasted blood, there was no stopping me, injuring two more on my next turn.

Meanwhile, the thrower was making up for lost time with a couple more long bombs, and the second of them led to my second score - this one being slightly trickier as I had to catch in a TZ and dodge twice to get free.

On the final drive of the game, the Superheroes ran and passed their way right down the field, but tripped at the final hurdle. With nothing to play for, and nothing better to do, I scooped up the loose ball and threw a short pass to the only player not in a TZ... the tree. And what do you know, the game came to a triumphant end with him taking the catch!

And by triumphant I mean triumphant in terms of my passing game. I still lost 4-2. But I finished with passing stats of 6 for 50 and the thrower, despite missing the whole of the first half, netted 4 for 44. And the treeman made a catch - did I mention that?

So you see, it really was a game of two halves.

As a side note, PeteW and I had played three previous games against each other, and the most recent of them was TWELVE YEARS AGO!

a - how did we manage to go so long without playing each other?
b - I'm getting old.”