“Well, what a thoroughly stupid, pointless, frustrating waste of time that was!

I was up against a team that was stronger, faster and more agile than me, so I wasn't expecting to win this one. Still, a game is a game and even one you're likely to lose badly can still be fun to play out. Sadly, this was destined not to be one of them.

As far as I was concerned, the game was handed to Pirigin on my first turn, when the tree failed his take root and then the thrower not only had his pass intercepted on a natural 6, he went and rolled a 1 for the safe throw, and a 1 for the reroll, leaving the ball in the hands of a ST4 catcher three squares from my endzone. Oh well, these things happen. You just shrug it off, take the hit and get on with it.

Except that this time there was no getting on with it. With everything going his way Pirigin decided to stall it out for the rest of the half - not too difficult as I had nothing I could even threaten a ST4 catcher with. I'm still rebuilding, so I don't yet have anyone with tackle, so I would have needed to get three players down to the catcher and hope for a POW. Possible, I suppose, but unlikely, especially as Pirigin was taking the opportunity to blitz me with his mighty blow blitzer every turn. The best I could hope to do was keep trying to push one of his players next to the tree so I could at least have the satisfaction of knocking someone over.

The half seemed to go on forever, but finally it had to come to an end and I could look forward to the pleasures of more of the same - except that this time I was three players down, all of them having decided to stay in the KO box. Sure enough, the mighty blow blitzes started once more, so I took the almost unheard of decision to commit a foul in order to get them to stop. And thankfully the blitzer was KO'd, and I didn't even mind the lineman being sent off as a result.

Before long, I had seven in the KO box, 2 in the SI box and one sent off, and it was just the tree on his poor little own. The elves, by this point, were way downfield with just a solitary journeyman left to keep the tree company - possibly Pirigin felt this sacrifice might make up for the complete lack of fun he'd given me for the other fifteen turns. Which, believe me, it didn't.

Insult was then heaped on injury when my thrower, having returned for the final turn, chose to missthrow his one attempt at a long bomb, leaving me with negative passing stats for the game (it was the catcher, making a short pass back to the thrower at the start).

So, what did I learn today?

I can't complain about the bad dice. It happens to everyone and sometimes it all comes at the same time. Some games are like that.

But the thing I really can't understand is why anyone would take such a commanding, game-winning opportunity and turn it into sixteen turns of absolute tedium. Come on, Pirigin, you could have won this one 5-0, or 6-0. I was in no position to put up any sort of defence, and I was never likely to do much on offence either, with you being stronger and faster than me. But trying would have been a lot of fun. I could have atoned for that miserable first turn, ended the game with some good passing stats and maybe, just maybe, even a lucky score.

Yes, Pirigin, you're a much better coach than me (at the moment you're about 1000 places above me on the CR ladder) but that wouldn't have stopped me wanting to try my luck against you in the future, over and over again for as long as I was having fun trying.

But not if this is what I have to look forward to. Sorry.”