Stewards are sweeping up the debris as they chivvy out the last stragglers and prepare to close the stadium for the final time. The Daemons of Malal team, Cacophony, have played their final game and have retired back to wherever it is that such creatures go when they're not playing Bloodbowl. The empyrean presumably. They are unlikely to be missed by many.

Outside, the verminous scum that pass for their fans are busily engaged in celebrating the latest and final in a long line of crushing defeats in their usual manner; petty vandalism, heavy drinking and random acts of violence. Amongst them, Cacophony's erstwhile coach Halfabrain wanders naked and with a bottle of spirits in his hand, tears of joy and relief streaming down his face as he mumbles to himself "it"s over, it's finally all over".

One sympathises with the sentiment.

How did this debacle come to be, people have wondered?
To be entirely fair, one can't say that the writing wasn't on the wall from the very start. The winter friendlies were less than encouraging as the team was by turns outclassed, outplayed and nearly always outfought.

But this is a team that comes into its own at high TV, the loyalists said, it would all come good by the end of the year. Luck would turn, marginal games would go in their favour and prestige would be won.

This spirit of blinkered optimism was given a boost during the opening Spring season when they performed beyond expectations, winning several games and narrowly missing out on a 2nd place finish by TD difference alone. Perhaps, coach Halfabrain thought to himself, things would be alright.

There had been some speculation in the sporting press as to why he had chosen this team when there were other, possibly more desirable positions available. These ranged from the mystic: Malal had a hold on his soul, to the cynical: gambling debts and blackmail. Some even said that perhaps he was just bloody stupid and hadn't thought things through.

Whatever the reason was, it was a with a spirit of (paper thin) determination and miss-placed confidence that he and his doomed team marched forward into Summer and their date with destiny.

The cracks appeared almost immediately. The teams big guy, always unreliable, had picked up an injury that meant that in addition to it's chronic addiction to turnovers, it would now spend more turns sleeping in the KO box than on the pitch. The jury is still deliberating on whether or not this was a blessing or a curse.

The rest of the team was little better and would die like flies in the face any kind of determined resistance. Big hands would drop balls, both heads would miss the outstretched leg of an opponent, and their foul appearance would leave the opposition blockers unmoved.
Summer was a debacle. A lucky win over a careless opponent aside, Cacophony were routinely crushed with contemptuous ease and finished bottom of the division. Autumn would be more of the same.

The one tiny shaft of light within the everlasting night that was the teams prospects was that their fans didn't seem at all upset by this seemingly unending series of humiliations. In fact the worst the team performed, the louder they cheered.

By this yardstick, Autumn was hugely successful, a particular highlight being a 5-0 trouncing by a team of were-things who ran rampant, scoring more in a single afternoon than they had in their previous 4 games. A slight blip at the season's halfway point when an uncharacteristic display of martial valour saw them somehow contrive to beat the league leaders was quickly put right with a hilariously incompetent performance in their next game which left them bottom of the league.

There, or there abouts is where they would stay until the inevitable end when Malal finally put them out of their misery and called time on the whole sorry venture. Halfabrain was given a beating, stripped of all his valuables and summarily thrown out on the street.

I am unsure if there is a moral to this sad tale or if the Daemons of Malal brand will ever recover. What is for certain is that Cacophony is no more and for that at least we can all be thankful.

On a less happy note we are reliably informed that coach Halfabrain will return in the new year with a new team of no-hopers and this reporter shall follow his antics with trepidation and faithfully report the results.