“The members of The Damned were in high spirits. A three-game win streak, coupled with everyone being healthy, and home field advantage, had the entire squad feeling invincible. Well, almost the entire squad. Jonas remained as ridged as ever, pacing up and down the locker room, continually checking and rechecking everyone’s equipment. Finally Jonas sat down heavily on the bench, attempting to block out the noise of the shouts and laughter of his team, all in an attempt to clear his head and prepare for the match which was about to start. It was Syd’s voice that broke through Jonas’ concentration, bringing him back to his senses, as he told some dirty joke about dwarves and women named after precipitation.

“Stow that chatter,” Jonas ordered, “we have a match to get ready for. To the field, let’s go!”

Yet, the last thing the team heard as they made their way towards the pitch was Syd’s sarcastic voice, calling after Jonas, saying, “But, Captain, did you take a look at these guys? What’s the worst thing they can do to us, bite our kneecaps off?”
________________________________

A deep kick to the dwarves was how this match begun. So deep, in fact, it went clear out of the back of the endzone for a touchback. With the ball now in the hands of one of their runners, the dwarves started forward, but the progress was halted when a failed runner-to-runner pass lest the ball open, yet heavily guarded by several dwarves. Several attempts were made to kill that pesky side stepping dwarven blitzer, all to no avail. To make matters worse, the foul attempt on the piling on linemen failed to injure the dwarf, and it was spotted by the ref. With the next turn, we were another man down, thanks to a hit by the dwarves, and the ball was safely back in the hands of one of their runners, and cage in nicely. For the rest of the half we employed the "if they keep hitting us, eventually they're going to hurt themselves" technique, which they eventually did, rolling double skulls with no rerolls left. This truly played to our advantage when the runner finally broke out from the cage to make a pass attempt to the blitzer in scoring range, who failed to catch the ball. We took this opportunity to swarm the ball and the two dwarves covering it, wrestling the blitzer down in the process. This robbed the dwarves of their chance to score in the first half, and with the ball about to come to us, things were looking up.

Playing 8-on-11, with a mean line of dwarves in front of us, we decided to take the high road, cutting toward one of the widezones, planing on using our superior speed to put the ball out of reach. The dwarves thought it would be more fun to pin us in along the sideline, and to send in their runner to strip the ball out of the hands of catcher {u]Simon. Over the next several turn the Damned did everything in their power to tie up as many dwarves as they could, which systematically being removed from the pitch. Yet, try as they might, the dwarves could just not manage to pick up the ball, until there were only four humans left on the field. One last hero attempt was made to blitz away a defender and dodge after the dwarf with the ball, but the dodge came crashing to the pitch. With a few more step the dwarves crossed the goalline, ending the match, 1-0, them.
__________________

Jonas regained consciousnesses shortly after the match had come to a close. From the silence, both from the stands and in the locker room, he could tell what the result of the match had been. Unsteadily at first, Jonas gained his feet and went searching through the locker room, finding what he was looking for in one of the darkened corners. He approached Syd, and placed his had on Syd's shoulder, and stated firmly, "Never underestimate your opponent. As soon as you do, you have all ready lost."

_________

All in all, not a great performance, but that's what happens when you go up against dwarves from time to time. Next time, we elfball...”