“IlavorDiscordia is a new coach - playing here in only his second game on FUMBBL. When this happens, I try to be helpful and not too aggressive and hope that the experience is fun enough to make the coach want to stick around and play more. A severe bashing (both physically and scoreline) is no way to get new coaches coming back for more.

That being said, I do like to win, so my generosity only goes so far. Here IilavorDiscordia suffered one of the more common problems for new coaches - how to pass or hand-off having moved first, not realising you have to select your option first. Being nice, I offered him a free turn because he obviously wanted to hand-off and was now stuck in a slightly awkward situation. But being a fair player himself, he kindly refused my offer and so we played on.

I managed to get the ball after a failed pass from the Promises thrower, and risking a 4+ pass, threw it deep to the catcher and secured the first score.

IlavorDiscordia then pulled back an equaliser almost straight away by doing exactly what I would have done in his position - running the catchers downfield on either side, securing the ball and protecting the thrower and then throwing to whichever target he could free up after my slightly rubbish attempt to cover them both.

But that left me enough time to score again before the half - assuming nothing went wrong with the passing game. It didn't, and I went into the second half 2-1 up and receiving the kick.

There were no blitzes or perfect defences to mess up my drive, and I scored as quickly as I could, allowing IlavorDiscordia plenty of time for another offensive drive and plenty of practice at knocking over his opponents (his blocking was pretty flawless at this point). A great pass from two tackle zones left the ball with his blitzer just outside my endzone, but luckily for me I was able to get in a lucky blitz and an even luckier catch of the bouncing ball by my thrower.

My final push was a run by a rookie lineman who caught the pass and came so close, failing the go for it that would have scored on my last turn.

3 skills and a lot of gold after the match - enough to finally replace my ogre - but no new fans for the first time in our 7-game existence. Ah well. I'm starting to look like a proper team again, with just a single journeyman left, and hopefully I can replace him with a second catcher after our next outing.

Thanks, IlavorDiscordia. Nice game. I hope you enjoy many more here on FUMBBL.”