“Now I know what a new puppy feels like!

You start off full of youthful exuberance and an eagerness to have fun, then...oops, you make a little mistake. In this case, the mistake was on my first blitz, when the wardancer failed his gfi and BH himself. Embarrassing and somewhat disappointing, seeing that he was the only one on the team with tackle. Amazingly,I managed to keep hold of the ball after that - which surprised me as I was facing a pack of gutter runners who were quicker than me and were tooled-up with all the right skills.

So, next turn, first action, the tree rolls a double skulls. To follow on with the puppy analogy, I suppose this is like the little fella dropping another load on the nice new carpet. Fortunately, the tree made his PRO roll and only rolled a single skull on the reroll, so I was able to throw the pass - from 3 TZs no less, but that's what nerves of steel is for.

I made the catch, ran in the TD, then set up to do what I could with a toothless defence against a superior offence. Not much, was the answer, except get injured quite easily. Having gained the advantage in terms of players, coolkojo set about maintaining it - and then increasing it - with what I was going to call careless abandon, except that there was nothing careless about it. It was clinical and methodical and executed with extreme prejudice.

As injury followed injury the defending became more and more difficult, and by the time the walk-in score came, I was already down to half a team for the reset.

Well, half a team was obviously still half a team too much for coolkojo, who went about the rest of the wood elves with a vengeance. When the game was clearly won and the wood elves clearly destroyed, that's when the fouling started. First it was the tree, then anyone who seemed to be within range, then the thrower - because he was a star and it would be fun to foul him.

And on turn 7, with the ball safely waiting just outside the endzone for the winning score, the rest of the rats gathered round, stuck the boot in and killed the thrower. Although the apo is usually reserved for the tree alone, I thought I'd risk it with just one turn to go and use it now. Very kindly, he gave me the option of killed or killed. Hmmm, tough choice, but in the end I went for killed. And then, thankfully, the tree survived the final turn.

So, to go back to the poor puppy. Having made his little mistake, he was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and had his nose rubbed in it. And then, once he'd learnt his lesson, he had his nose rubbed in it again. And then, for good measure, he had the rest of his face rubbed in it as well. Why? Possibly to make sure the lesson was well and truly learned, but more likely because, by that point, its owner was having so much fun he couldn't see any reason to stop.

And so, another thrower bites the dust. He's not the first, and he certainly won't be the last, but (and I'll say this bit quietly because it sounds a bit like sour grapes) in a way I'm glad he's gone. I just can't cope with two legends in the same team, and for the time being, this team has to be all about the tree. For a while now, I've found myself ignoring him in favour of the passing game and all it's really done is push my rating through the roof and made it harder for Thursdaynight to see as much of the action as he would like.

So from now on I'm going to divide my obsessions between two separate teams. Sensation will now become Thursdaynight's team and will be all about getting him as many MVPs as possible without worrying about any of the other players around him who can come and go as they - or my opponents - choose. Meanwhile, I will resurrect California Sun, my other R woodies, and they will now become my thrower factory, without having an over-precious tree to worry about at the same time.

It's going to be hard. It's hard enough for me to keep track of one bunch of wood elves, let alone two, and sooner or later I'm sure the whole plan will unravel, but for the moment let's see how it goes. So for now I've cleared out some of the TR bloaters from Sensation, plunging my TR down to a much more manageable level and although I have little in the way of skills left, I suppose this is what the future holds.

And as for this game? Well, unsurprisingly, there were very few positives, but I can say thank you, coolkojo, the lesson has been learnt, and I think I can safely say that it will never, ever happen again.”