“"So, coach, you thought the first zombie match was such a success, eh? Wanted to up the ante a bit, eh? Adding two bloodthirsty mummies to the mix would surely improve matters, doncha think?

The head coach has taken a little break for now, "meditating". So as the next ranking member of the coaching staff, I'll have to write the report for him.

It's hard to be a lizardman. This match was supposed to be fine and dandy against another necromancer's undead cohorts, right? Well, we're here to tell you that it doesn't matter that zombies are slow, clumsy, and have that perpetual "nnnnngh..." expression on their faces. They kick plenty of tail regardless.

Let's see. We're a little late in setting up for the first drive, so our line's a little imbalanced, but it turns out the zombies don't give a hoot, cause they go by the tried&true wall of pain offense anyway. After our three Sauri on the line have been knocked down as usual, us skinks run upfield trying to steal the ball or sack the zombie with the ball. Whatever. You know what? It's fine. Let the little guys take the risks, there are always plenty of skinks where they come from. So soon there are seven skinks around the ball, but I hate to inform you there's a catch with that plan, coach:

There are just as many zombies around the ball, too, since each of the remaining Sauri can only keep one mummy busy at a time. That, or two zombies. And you <i>know</i> they're gonna be on the defense all the time if they don't happen to get lucky taking apart a zombie early or something.

So if some guy like Sslicker finally recovers the ball and rushes away from the mayhem, you can bet your headfeathers the rest of the skinks have suffered in the meantime. I mean, it's all about numbers, right? A poor fellow can only suffer so many hits to his body before it calls it a day, right? Sooner or later they all end up in the casualties room in our dugout. But when the Sauri need treatment - a Mummy named Big Dad decides he has had it and gets the right stranglehold on Ssrah or another of the Saurus guys, or maybe somebody just needs a trip to the smelling salts room.

The point is, the skinks can't handle being badly outnumbered for great lengths of time without backup. It only leads to more broken jaws, like Vernie the zombie blocker did to Sslither. And sending Sslither into the zombie cage to steal the ball - and to expect them to peacefully stand around and watch him picking it up - well of course he's gonna get hurt. Badly! It's three tall zombies at any given time continually chainblocking one little skink, for Sotek's sake! If Hankie hadn't got him, then Stevie or Nickie or Frankie or Willie would have. You just be happy it wasn't any permanent damage.

The zombies wouldn't have tied the score to halftime anyway. You were greedy, coach. Admit it. And as a result, you had only six players left for our receiving drive second half. I know you don't like mathematics, but there's a little something called exponential progression. Or better yet, logarhitmic progression. I can explain it to you like this: The more you have lost already, the more valuable becomes what you have left. That normally means that you look after your players even more carefully when some of the guys are already hurt. NOT to take more reckless and unneccessary risks.

I'll give you one thing, though, freeing the lone zombie marker on Ssawrh so that you could utilize the Saurus in a narrow two-pronged deep V defense after Sshakk't had returned the ball, that was kind of neat. Pity Ssawrh wasn't enough of a blocker to remove that big corpse who stood in his way all by himself, though. And if you'd had the sense to move Sshakk't and the ball out of the way before opening that great big hole in the defense - Well, it's lucky that Indie zombie who finally blitzed Sshakk't into the recovery room went down itself so that Ssphrikk's could run the ball away.

But as the only way he really could run was in the direction of our own end zone, it wasn't really safe there either. Now, after drawing the zombies towards him, moving towards the other wing wasn't the daftest thing ever. But you could have made Sstrith'l get the heck up and at least tried to thwart the blitz. OK, maybe he'd have to escape from four zombies and a mummy first. But he could at least have tried.

So roughly one quarter of the match is left, the sit is nine zombies and two mummies against three skinks and two Sauri. And the ball is loose four paces from the end line. Our end line. So of course they see fit to knock another skink silly before half the zombie squad makes way around the ball, one of corpses apparently having reliable enough animation routines to pick up the ball and score all by itself.

So on the last drive we're supposed to score with four players, and two of them might as well be armless for the use they are in handling a ball. And coach, let me assure you that I agreed with you on the punting decision in itself. Much better chances of sneaking the skinks backfield once the undead wall of pain would have eroded somewhat. What I don't get at all is why you insisted on sending poor Sskwizz't practically into the arms of Vernie and Big Mum before the punt, who naturally interfered so that the ball ended up <i>behind</i> all four of our players on the line of scrimmage!

Who, as you might recall, must have looked mightily juicy and sweet to the undead guys on the other side of the line. At least to Vernie, who literally slaughtered our Sstrith'l. Sskwizz't, right next to the murder but struggling with his own zombie, swears to me that he heard the zombie utter something sounding like "Daaaaaste liiike chiiiiikkeeen" as Sstrith'l kicked his last kicks, bleeding all over the grass. Good thing the necromancer head coach of the ZombieZoo was totally cool about it, he didn't add the corpse to his team or anything.

When the rest of our team - count'em, one, two, three! - would try to stop the Panckie and the zombies rushing, no, more like shuffling towards our end zone, we had to rely on our last skink running after the dead gang, trying to blitz and dodge between all the dead meat. It's not like our Sauri could do anything other than to get slammed to the ground and rise themselves up again.

So yeah, the zombies won. Another skink killed. Maybe you should rethink a little tactics, coach? It's still not too late. You can go over this document for some pointers, but the most important one is this:

<b>Try hitting someone your own size!</b>"”