There have been many times over the past season when, as the lonely hours come and my last bottle of spirits rolls empty on the floor I rave drunkenly at the unfairness of it all and wallowing in despair and self pity I ask myself how did I end up here.

I was on the coaching staff of the Reavers you know. I mean, it was only the 3rd tier reserves of one of their associated feeder teams and they wore brown rather than Reikland Blue but it was still the Reavers. How far can one man fall? How will he know when he's hit rock bottom and there really is nowhere (absolutely nowhere) that he could be that would make his circumstances more pitiable or his outlook any less without hope? Well, let me tell you.

It all started with an unfortunate financial misunderstanding. A surprise audit of the club accounts uncovered a few minor irregularities and when the owners bully boys found that bag of gold sovs in my locker it was either run or submit to a personal interview with the club management (body found floating in the docks...).

Of course I lost my coach's licence but there's plenty of places where such things aren't necessarily required and I felt sure I could shift for myself well enough. Something would turn up, it always does.

Unluckily for me what turned up was a young entrepreneurial fellow with a dream and plenty of cash. I can hear you now; "What's this? Old Half has lost his mind, surely a man of his talents could skin this young pup and be halfway to Tilea before you can say peeler". Well normally you'd be right, but dammit if my greed didn't get the better of me. You see, young Mekutata, for that was his name, had a notion that he would start a new league. Knowing something about our Great Game he'd realised that some of the most popular teams out there are Goblin outfits and being no fool, understood why this was; namely chainsaws, explosives and drug crazed lunatics with a giant ball and chain.

His genius idea was to have an entire league full of these teams. The advantages of this would be two-fold. Firstly, while a chainsaw is a wonderful thing, having one is no substitute for a trained, tough and well kitted out team. With only goblins around however, there would be no professionally skilled and reliable players opposing them to spoil all the fun. Secondly, there would be none of those usual boring things one takes for granted in a normal league such as rules that make sense or any reasonable limits on the destructive "playin' aids" that the little green imps enjoy using so much.

I said he was a genius but then the gap between that and madness is thin indeed and I've no doubt Mekutata spans the divide. It was to be called the XXXL and it was to open with 12 teams in 2 divisions.

The big networks were quite taken with the idea and had given him a really rather huge pile of rhino to get things rolling. Of course this being an all-goblin league, institutional "korrupshun" was a given and I instantly seized the opportunity given to me and dove straight in, agreeing to coach one of the teams in "Headz" division.

People think that Goblins are cute and funny. They are not. If there's a more vicious, conniving, lazy and down right cowardly race of creatures in the old world I haven't met them, and I spent a year on secondment with the Scramblers. I'll allow that they can be an endearingly cheerful bunch of rogues and their antics are often quite entertaining when you've no skin in the game but just you try coaching them.

My new team, the "Bad Apples" were a case in point and a more disorderly band of cut-throats you've never met. I had a few weeks to whip them into shape though I didn't try very hard, after all I was here to steal a fortune not win prizes. The Gold I'd been given to assemble the team was burning a hole in my pocket and after hiring players and training expenses I had nearly half a million left over.

Now there's a lot of things you can do with that amount of money, you could lock it up in the bank for example, or maybe invest it in one of the Church of Sigmar's ethical bonds; all very safe and with a reasonable rate of return. What I chose to do was blow the lot on a monstrously huge bet on my first game.

I'd had a look at the match schedule and we were due to host the "Most Knives" or something, a frankly amateurish bunch of chancers and optimists that would be fielding SEVEN trolls.

There are few teams that can not be made better by the addition of a troll. Trolls are very big, very strong and very tough and make excellent roadblocks. Unfortunately they are also very stupid and while Goblin teams, due to their puny physiques and lack of any other options can probably justify fielding two of the brutes, having seven I felt was very much going over the top. Pre-season performances had been encouraging and I was confident we'd win easily after which I'd be very rich and have the money back in the team coffers before anyone was the wiser.

What could go wrong?

Tune in next time as I continue the tale of my downfall.