“The Grudgebearers' losing streak continues apace and it looks like the Dwarves, once sitting prettily at the top of their division, may find themselves in fourth place after the first round of return to divisional play.

Despite causing five casualties in the course of the game, the Lizards played their scaly little hearts out and their combination of speed and strength proved too much for us.

After scoring quickly in the first half, the Lizards (with the help of a "bad kick" that almost but the ball in the Grudgebearers' endzone) managed to slow the Dwarves drive to the point where they were not able to make it into the endzone before the half ended.

Second half, another "bad kick" again placed the ball deep in the Dwarves' territory, giving Dinotopia more time to organize their defense. After a brutal march down the field, in which most of the inflicted injuries occurred, Begnar Orcchaser found himself within scoring distance of the Lizards' endzone. Ironically, while not stalling has contributed to our losses in our last two games, the decision <i>to</i> stall nearly cost us the game without the second TD when Shaq managed to put a sidestepping Skink on my stalling ball carrier (who now has tackle, btw....). Naturally I rolled double pushbacks and it was only some fancy footwork by the Runner that gave us the tying TD.

Already with our eyes on OT, we didn't set up particularly well for what remained of regulation time and Shaq was able to exploit our sloppy set-up well, punching a hole in our line and pouring Sauri and Skinks through with the ball. We actually recovered ourselves well, knocking some Sauruses around (including SIing Dimetrodon for reall this time) and freeing up a longbeard who managed to GFI twice in order to block the ball-carrying skink (a POW, no injury) until a double skull roll on one of the Sauri protecting the ball carrier ended our turn and freed up essential manpower (lizardpower?) The Sauri batted the Dwarves away from the ball and the Skink then popped up, snatched the ball up and made two successful GFIs to score the winning TD.

Oh well. The Sultans of Slice are back next game and the boys are eager to get dirty once more with Ali Baba and his crew. And there's always the promise of that Dwarf-Zon game towards the end of the regular season to keep us going....”