“Welcome to the battle of the journeymen! There were five on each team and to be honest, there weren't a huge number of skills on the rest of the players either. But at least the two teams were fairly evenly matched, which would hopefully make it a balanced match if nothing else.

The Greenglades received the kick and went straight into combat mode, with their multi-blocking tree getting a couple of blocks in on the poor loners. A blitz and a few more blocks followed, but either mrh30 was using the wrong dice, or else his players weren't really up to speed, because every single result was a pushback and the turn ended with all of me still standing.

I couldn't reach the ball-carrier, so I did what I could, putting the three potential receivers in tackle zones and rushing the catchers downfield just in case there was a mis-throw.

Then disaster struck as the Greenglades' wardancer nipped out of his TZ and blitzed my thrower, sending him off to the BH box before he'd even had so much as a sniff of the ball. Humph! Oh yes, and then that same WD got the ball and tucked himself up nice and safely between two other players. My blitz on the following turn was not good enough to get the ball and so the Greenglades scored.

Now what? How do you play this game without a thrower? I stuck the rookie catcher in the back field and hoped for the best. Well, the best seemed to be a blitz on the kick-off result and although I kept hold of the ball, the tree took root and my offence was all over the place.

But I pulled it together, made the quick pass and then ran in the score.

Then all three of my top players were laid low by the heat (along with one of the journeymen as well) so that I was facing a full team with next to nothing in the way of defence. A perfect defence at least let me avoid another pounding from the tree, and then a glimmer of hope appeared when the Greenglades' deep thrower fumbled the pick-up. I ran my catcher all the way down, but the kick had been so deep all I could do was get myself one square short - which was no problem for the thrower, who nipped in, picked up, nipped out and threw the ball to safety.

With so few players, I was in no position to score, but I did manage to blitz the opposing catcher into the KO box, preventing a last-turn score, and so we went into the second half at 1-1.

And then the heat had a go at the Greenglades, removing their tree and two more of their players while I was back up to full strength (apart from the thrower). Needless to say, I was able to score nice and quickly. All I had to do was avoid the wardancer with tackle and strip ball (which was, to be fair, quite tricky) and run it in.

With everything in my favour and only half a team against me, I could have stalled for the win, but as I've said many times before, I HATE STALLING, so I didn't. Instead we played a proper wood elf game, even though that allowed mrh30 to grab a quick equaliser and then to pull ahead, and then stop me on my final drive.

I forget exactly how that all happened - you'll have to watch the replay if you can be bothered - but I do remember there being some outrageously outrageous dice rolling on mrh30's part. His turn 7 was particularly impressive. He rolled a 2 at some point (I think as part of the armour roll on one of my players) and everything else was a 4, 5 or 6 - and they just kept coming. I was beginning to wonder whether there were any 1s on his dice.

Now, to be fair, I managed something similar on my following turn, rerolling the blitz to get the wardancer down, picking up and handing off and running for all I was worth into clear space, ready to score as long as I could keep hold of the ball...

...which I couldn't. So the Greenglades did it again, grabbing the ball in a tackle zone, dodging away and throwing the pass. And then two things happened. The first was that one of my loners made the interception. The second was that the game suddenly ended.

Oh yeah, it was turn 8. I'd forgotten, so all that desperate stuff I'd done on my final turn had all been for nothing. Oh well, it had been fun.

So, a fairly meh performance from my lot, and somewhat pointless given that I was denied my passing game. The tree picked up a couple of cas, and the catcher who became a thrower skilled up with guard, which was nice. Also, seeing as how I had the gold, I bought the journeyman who made the interception.

Also, and this one is much more important, I retired Easypeasy. He was actually missing this game and I had meant to do it last time, but forgot. I don't often retire throwers, preferring them to lob long bombs until they die on the pitch, but he was something of a drain on the TR and despite making it to the all-time top 10 highest passing, he wasn't really that good, turning legend without either strong arm or +AG. He was also kind of battered. So off he goes to enjoy his much-deserved retirement, leaving the way clear for Chocolateorange who is already a much better prospect.

And the TR has plummeted, too.

Thanks for the game, mrh30. Hopefully the next time we meet I'll get to show you my passing game. It won't make it any more likely I'll win, but it does make losing look a lot more classy!”