“First game of the Season for Real… and with a disappointing cup run, well, step, and a disappointing friendly phase due to aging bones, it looked that their first game against Bromwitch’s Zons would go the same way.

Fortune favoured us though and none of the 4 nigglers we had niggled out, keeping a very important mummy and two tacklers in the game. The Zons set up and left three one rookies for the slaughter whilst the rest moved to the end zone… this would allow Real much longer than they were accustomed to to get a three player advantage!

The Zons went down intact and a foul managed to remove one at the cost of a sending off… not so great on the whole. The Zons were unable to capitalise though being so far back, allowing us to gather the ball and slowly make our way down the flank.

The few guards of the Zons, coupled with Zara and another Lino’s Dauntless put up a very effective defence forcing us to score early after an early sack.

The Zons were set for the return; we expected them to line up at their end zone again but they surprised us by not. An out of bounds kick allowed Zara to take the ball. The Zons charged up the flank, and we did what we could to cut them off, even attempting a surf despite knowing we would be returned in kind, we powed the target however!
The Zons now had a chance to break away, however they opted to block as much as they could instead, so when Zara failed to move a Ghoul she was left without an opening to make the score.

In the second half, Zara was still on the pitch, much to our annoyance. Thankfully the Zons were more interested in blitzing with their first team players than Zara, which helped our Wights stay on the pitch. The Zons left an opening to get an assisted block and we took their ball carrier down. The Zombies however failed to live up to the rest of the team’s ability and ruined our players twice over. This cost Niggled Ghoul, Morten Skoubo, dearly when Zara surfed him into the crowd Bromwitch’s contingency promptly ripped him apart!

The Zons eventually got the ball back and scored to tie the game. 1 - 1

Back on the field, and a familiar defence greeted us. We ploughed through the three girls on the LOS, then feigned to one flank. The Zons got slightly sucked into the feign and we broke to the opposite flank. A few Zons offered up a slight defence whilst others joined their tied up sisters to assist in blocking… the game was ours as we marched the ball home!

2 – 1 And Victory!

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This was a close game and a draw would have been a good result for us… thankfully we got more than that, owing in large to Keravin’s double skull block that forced him to use his reroll. Then when Zara tried to remove one of two blodges and failed to move them (2* Skull/Pow) she was left with nowhere to go.

The biggest help in the game though was that the Zons had no confidence in their abilities to stand up and match the Undead, despite having more guard and dauntless girls capable of taking on the mummies, their deep setups left us two turns to reduce their numbers and get an advantage, all the while being incapable of capitalising on any mistakes… such as my sending off without securing the ball first.

I also made several silly mistakes in the game… I’ll never learn.

Keravin remains unconvinced as to how well his team may perform this season, and this will likely cost his team their premier spot.

Still a tough game and I doubt I’ll be the only Undead team to think so.
”