Well, where to start.
I guess the logical place to start would be the score: 2-1 to the Stilton Stealers.
This was a completely unfair result to ghostwolf, who is not exaggerating when he says he played a nigh on flawless game.
I received the ball first, and decided to use tactics more suited to dealing with ronin's orcs, rather than a dodgier team like the gobbos. This completely inept play led to ghostwolf taking the ball off me, spanking me like a spoiled child by injuring two of my players (one of them my thrower, and a clan rat, both missing next game), stalling the rest of the half, scoring, and setting up to receive the ball in the second half.
This was a completely fair result considering how I had played in the first half.
The second half I sharpened up my act, and despite losing a clan rat to a particularly acute case of death, and another missing the rest of the game, and actually played some D.
Yes, ghostwolf was unlucky to fail the dodge he needed to take a 2-0 lead, and dropped the ball, resulting in me picking it up, and scoring in by the end of my 13th turn.
However, my players were in the right place to cause this fumble, and I think in the cold light of day, ghostwolf may accept that in the first half he was very lucky with the amount of dodges he made (particularly to stop me knocking his players down), and it was inevitable he would fail a few eventually. He was just particularly unfortunate that it was the key one to put the game away he failed.
With the score 1-1, he received the ball again, and began a dangerous push down my right flank. I managed to stall this pretty well, and as it ground to a halt, he made the only 'mistake' of his entire game. To be honest, it couldn't really be categorised as a mistake, since he played to win the game, and attempted a pass to a free player, who, if successful, would have scored. Howver, I had forced him to use all his rerolls already, and, he fluffed the pass (also unlucky).
However, I was also playing to win the game. I had a gutter runner goalhanging safely in his half, for just this kind of ocurrance. My other gutter runner picked up the ball, dodged away from a tackle of a goblin, and pelted the ball to my goalhanger. Now, the rat fluffed it, causing me to use my final reroll to give it another go. The rat fluffed it for a second time, but nowhere near as badly, and the ball took a very fortunate bounce, landing just before the sideline.
In the final turn, my deep gutter runner was able to dodge last ditch tackles, pick up the ball, and headed for the endzone. He needed two 'go for it' rolls to make it, and fortunately for me, passed them both, ending the game 2-1 in my favour.
In fairness, I'd had a gutter runner stack a go for it roll on the goaline (even with a reroll) earlier, so I felt probability evened out.
However you look at it, ghostwolf was very unlucky to lose this game, but I think I played a very good second half, especially down 4 players near the end, and put myself in a position to score quickly. I got luck I probably didn't deserve, especially with my warmup banter at lunchtime of this being a 'green harvest' for me. (Because, you know, goblins bleed green, star player points are green coloured, and so is all the money I was sure I'd win).
This smack talk wasn't in any way backed up, with most of my players feeling like they'd been assaulted by tiny green and purple tornadoes.
Should have been a draw. Sorry mate
