“Well, what an absolute load of old tosh that was. It was a perfect example of how to lose a game in 30 seconds, and sadly for me, having got the perfect start and an easy advantage, NickNutria chose to follow up with an 8-turn stall followed by pretty much the same thing in the second half. His choice, and I'm sure he had other considerations apart from his opponent's fun, but it made for a dull game which offered such promise and failed to deliver from the very first kick.

So, this is how it went...

It looked like a match up of great potential. I love the passing game, and I love throwing deep passes, so going up against an entire team of potential interceptors was always going to be a challenge. On top of that, Matschplanscher are an awesome team, with a TV of 3000 (which is the highest I've seen for a long time) and apart from the various ST4 players I would have to contend with, they also came with an impressive 8 tacklers. Needless to say, it didn't look promising.

But so what. If you only ever play games you're likely to win, you're missing out on a lot of fun games, and to be honest all I really wanted was to throw some long bombs into risky territory and hope for the best.

I had a huge amount of inducement cash of course, but rather than just take Morg and go round hitting lots of things, I thought I'd spread the cash about a bit. I took two cards, but neither of them was particularly useful in the end. Kicking boots was a waste as I don't foul and already had a kicker and I never really had an opportunity to use the stolen playbook. I did take Zara, because I thought a bit of ST4 might come in handy, and Eldril because I naively thought the pass block might come in handy. Also, a couple of mercs to boost the numbers.

So on to the match. I received the kick. Kick-off result was blitz. The blitz resulted in my thrower being knocked down, a slann blitzer catching the ball and the rest of my team suddenly finding themselves wedged into tackling tackle zones. My first action of the game was therefore a block with the tree, who promptly rolled double skulls.

And so ended my offence for the rest of the half. NickNutria consolidated his good position by KOing two of my players on his following turn, and knocking down several more. He also ran the ball down to just outside the end zone, where it remained while the rest of his team caught up, knocked over any of the wood elves who bothered to stand up and generally made sure the wood elves knew that staying on the floor was the better option.

So ended the first half.

For the second half I was at least in a position to make some blocks, and actually my blocking was pretty good - just completely ineffective. NickNutria used the apo on the one injury I caused and sadly I chose not to do the same on my -AV on one of my catchers.

But again, the ball came to a halt just outside the end zone while the rest of the slann knocked over the wood elves some more, and they even had time for a couple of quick passes while they were waiting. Finally, on turn 8, the score was made.

And what do you know? I get a turn of offence at last (assuming there wasn't another blitz - which there wasn't). So I managed a 12-yard pass, just so the game wasn't a total write-off, and heaved a sigh of relief that the damn thing was over.

Such a disappointment. Those of you who actually bother to read these reports will know by now that losing isn't a big deal for me. I do it a lot. But what I do really hate is stalling. Yes, I get that sometimes it can be a valid tactic, and preventing the speedy wood elves from having the opportunity to try for a one-turn score is fair enough, but when you're dominating a game, when your team is clearly superior to your opponent's in every way and when you could easily come away with five or six scores, why on earth would you choose to stall for eight turns?

Honestly, I would rather have lost this one 8-0 if it meant I got eight chances to throw the ball along the way. And the way I play, the slann could easily have racked up a handful of interceptions as well. Instead, the end result is that NickNutria won (as he was almost certain to do anyway) and I had one of the dullest games I've played in a long time. Well, as I said earlier, I'm sure keeping his opponent happy was not high on NickNutria's to-do list and if he wants to win by dulling me into a coma that's his right. But it's also my right to try and avoid games like this if I possibly can, and I'll certainly be doing that in future. That's one of the reasons I write these reports, so I can look at past matches and see what sort of a game I'm likely to get from any particular coach. I try not to be too negative generally, and I've learned to stop complaining about being fouled into the ground, but if there's one thing I will try and avoid, it's a game against a staller.

She's a Sensation are not a difficult team to beat (or beat-up!) and sometimes a high TV team might like the opportunity to have a gentle game against them, rather than against one of the destroyer teams that are so ubiquitous at 2000K+. Well, that's fine. I love playing super-high TV teams, but only if I think I'm going to get a fun game out of it. BUT THAT MEANS NO STALLING.

So there you go, rant over. But honestly, I had so much more fun writing the report than I did playing the match. And that's a real shame.”