“Chapter 20

“And that,” said Coach Robsson with a long-suffering sigh, “is why I don’t like playing chaos teams. It’s about as much fun as licking a goblin’s armpit.”
Bullet With Butterfly Wings, sitting beside him, grimaced as he pictured the image. They were sitting on the sidelines watching as the match between the White Men in Black Suits and the chaos team, Rather a Rude Mass, continued on towards its desperately longed-for finish. Bullet had been recovering from an earlier injury and had fortunately not been forced to take part, so he had sat and kept the bored coach company as the slow minutes ticked by.
“You see,” continued Robsson, “for them it’s not really about winning, its about not letting the opponent win.”
Bullet With Butterfly Wings looked puzzled. He usually did.
“But isn’t that the same thing, Coach?”
“No, not at all. A lot of teams, and I include us in this, try and score a lot of touchdowns. That’s the reason we’re here, we’re good at it and the fans love seeing the ball flying through the air as often as possible. Some teams aren’t much good at throwing though, so they run with the ball. Even so, most teams manage to find a fast runner and can still score lots of touchdowns. With me so far?”
Bullet With Butterfly Wings nodded, eventually.
“Right. Now some teams, and here I would point you in the direction of the, ah, gentlemen out there, some teams can’t really do either very well. So their strategy is to get hold of the ball and keep hold of the ball until the whistle goes, making sure that when the whistle does blow, the one who is holding the ball is the right side of the right line. In the meantime, they can enjoy themselves flexing their muscles and generally trying to smear blood all over the grass while shouting things like, Rargh, Blood for the Blood God! Or, Look at me, I’m so tough I ate my own brain for breakfast!”
Bullet nodded wisely. It was a look which really didn’t work for him. He tried to think of something clever to say, but nothing came to mind, and besides, Coach Robsson was in full pulpit mode and it was unlikely he would stop before the match did.
“Take this match, for example. You saw what a mess we made of the opening. So Much for the Afterglow threw the ball into the middle of nowhere before we were in a good position and after that the chaos horde trundled its way slowly back up the field at the speed of sludge treacle. It was only thanks to their similarly hopeless attempt to pass the ball rather than score that let us recover and score ourselves. And then what? I gave them plenty of time to score an equalizer before the half and for a few minutes we actually saw some exciting play. They were good. They took some risks. And it paid off. Well, after that I was quite looking forward to the second half. A bit more like that and the day would have been a good one.”
The final whistle blew.
“Oh, thank the gods!” exclaimed Robsson. “I thought it would never end. Nearly half an hour I’ve been sitting here watching them stand there like a bunch of clueless trolls, tossing the ball to each other like it was a hot potato trying to work out which one was going to score.”
“But they did win,” put in Bullet quickly while the coach was taking a breath.
“Yes they won. Well woop-de-doo to them. What does it matter if they won? We’ve lost before, and we’ll certainly lose again. But hopefully, next time we lose it’ll be in an epic struggle of excitement and skill and thrills. The crowd will love it. Not like this ditchwater affair. Look, the stands are half empty already. I saw people packing up and going home twenty minutes ago. Even our cheerleaders fell asleep! That’s not how BloodBowl should be played.”
As the rest of the team slouched off the field Coach Robsson gave them a round of applause.
“Well done lads. Good effort. Not many teams could have stayed awake for as long as you did out there.”
Beds are Burning slumped down onto a stool beside his coach.
“Honestly, Boss. What was the point in that?”
“It’s the dream,” replied Robsson cryptically.
“Huh?” asked both wardancers.
“When I was younger, when I was first starting out as a coach, I went to see the Chaos All-Stars play against the Hochland Reavers. That’s the Hochland Reavers mind. It was back before they sold out and moved to Reikland for the extra gold. Anyway, that day I saw a truly magnificent game. The All-Stars were superb. There was nothing they couldn’t do. They outran, outpassed, outblocked and in every other way, outclassed the Reavers. It was just awesome. And that day I decided to coach a team that would be worthy of playing against the Chaos All-Stars. Even to be on the same pitch as those legends would have been enough. To actually win the game, even to survive it, these were way beyond my wildest dreams, but to play against such a fine team…”
The Coach was starting to get dewey-eyed, but every single one of his players was rapt.
“Anyway, over the years I’ve managed to produce some fine teams, with some truly star players in them. Once or twice I’ve even thought I was ready to face the All-Stars. But of course, it’s never happened. After the All-Stars disbanded way back in ninety-six, there’s been nothing like them in the annals of BloodBowl history. And ever since that sad day, I’ve been hunting for a chaos team that could reproduce the magic those All-Stars showed. But there’s nothing. Sure, there are some really top quality teams out there. Even some that could have beaten the All-Stars, but for me it has to be a chaos team. Nothing else will do. And you know what, in all these years, no chaos team I’ve ever played against has even come close. These days chaos teams stink. It’s all about breeding themselves into killing machines. Nothing more. They might keep one or two skilful players on the squad for form’s sake, so they can actually throw a pass if they have to, but mostly it’s just the same old gut-ripping, bone-shattering shamble of thugs who are only interested in having a higher kill tally than their team-mates. Oh sure, they can win games, but who can’t when there’s no one left standing on the opposite side of the field?
“And today I really thought we might have a hope of getting some good play. Those few minutes before the half were wonderful, but really, the twenty-five minutes before-hand and the thirty minutes afterwards were a dull, pointless and disappointing waste of everybody’s time. So let them go and celebrate their great victory with a double sacrifice or whatever, while I go and find us some opponents that will make it worth my while actually bothering to turn up. Maybe it’s time to find some more undead teams. Some of them have a lot more life in them than this lot did today.”
He glanced around. It was dark. The stands were empty and the only people left in the entire stadium were the few players still seated around him. And even one or two of them were asleep. He sighed.
“Here endeth the lesson.”
”