Fleagles Top Black Rock Brutes 2-1 With Stunning, Unlikely Second-Half Rally

 

The Filthasmellfia Fleagles pulled off a late-game miracle to steal a 2-1 victory from the Black Rock Brutes in their second game in the UKBBL’s Kolsa Hills East Dvivision. Despite suffering 2 rat casualties, 6 KOs, and 1 death, the Fleagles got a pair of touchdowns from gutter runners Devermin Sniff and A.J. Brownrat. The Brutes got their lone TD from beastman Nadzybar “The Archon of Chaos” and were poised for a 2-1 grind victory of their own until a second-half desperation blitz by Sniff turned the game around.

Devermin Sniff, who would later make a game changing sideline blitz, scores the opening TD in the rain to put Filthasmellfia up 1-0

“Heck of a play by Sniff there,” said Fleagles Coach Nickon Spearinme. “Asking a gutter runner to make a physical play like that is about as smart as hiring a beast of Nurgle as a pediatrician, but we were in a tough spot, and sometimes these little fellas have to do more than dodge.”

Filthasmellfia opened the scoring in the first half on a touchdown scamper up the eastern sideline by Sniff. With the pouring rain making the ball hard to handle, skaven thrower Jaflegm Squirtz set up as a blocker, while the more agile Sniff went for the ball. Despite bobbling it once, Sniff soon secured the ball and slowly approached midfield behind a screen of blockers.

Forced to be one of those blockers, Squirtz looked less than comfortable with this new role. As chaos chosen blocker Abadon “Blood Legion” blitzed, the skaven thrower appeared to close his eyes, turn away and whimper.

“Yeah, apparently, there’s a reason they call those guys throwers and not blockers,” said Coach Spearinme.

Defenseless, Squirtz took a brutal punch from the chosen blocker’s mailed fist directly in the side of his neck. The blow opened a deep wound that gushed a fountain of blood, and as Squirtz slowly slumped to the pitch, it was clear he was dead.

“At first I thought, yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark,” recounted Coach Spearinme. “Then I thought, that’s a lot of blood. Then I got a little dizzy and threw up on the sidelines. And then, I was like, crap our thrower’s dead. Poor guy never even got to make a pass, and I really thought he had a bright future ahead of him. Former Cheesman Trophy winner, great leadership potential. Ah, well, we’ll make sure we send a rotting-garbage basket to his family with our condolences.”

Jayflegm Squirtz cowers in fear moments before Abadon delivers the death blow.

Unfazed by Squirtz’s death, Sniff dodged his way up the sideline and moved deep into the Brutes’ territory with a cadre of blockers. As beastmen and chosen blockers closed in, however, Sniff was unable to milk much more time off the clock and scored a little over halfway through the first half. 

After catching the ensuing kick despite the downpour, Brutes’ beastman Invictus “World Eater” was able to move quickly into Filthaspellfia territory. The rats raced downfield to try to cut off his path to the endzone as the clock ticked down the final seconds. Racing to get into position, blitzer Ratdon Grime tripped over his own tail, leaving a slight opening. The Brutes quickly took advantage, punching away as many rats as they could, as Invictus handed the ball to Nadzybar, who raced across the goal line just before the halftime whistle.

“I guess we scored a little too quickly, and gave them too much time for the equalizer,” said Spearinme. “That’s the problem with skaven. They tend to do everything with a little too much speed. I mean, they also tend to do everything with too many fleas flying around them and too much rotting garbage in their mouths, but those are different issues.”

Nadzybar scores just before half time to tie the game 1-1

Down 2 players going into the second half, the Fleagles’ only hope for a win or a tie looked to be the rain keeping the Brutes from securing the ball. But beastman Taramino “Warsmith” easily scooped up the kick off, and Black Rock put their numbers advantage to use, bashing a slow path up field. The winning touchdown looked to be inevitable, as the Fleagles lost 2 more players to KOs, but then a glimmer of a chance opened up as Taramino ran along the sideline with only one blocker and the few skavens on the field were able to stay on their feet and tie up multiple Brute blockers.

Filthasmelfia had two options. The conservative play would be to dodge up field, threaten the runner, and force a score with enough time on the clock to still tie the game. The aggressive option—send a gutter runner on a desperation two-against-one sideline blitz and pray for a crowd surf.

“That’s one of those plays you look at and you say, on paper it’s a bad idea, on the field it’s a bad idea, heck, even in the deepest cavern of the Under-Empire it’s a bad idea” said Spearinme. “But I was running out of ideas and running out of rats, so I figured, why not?”

Spearinme signaled Sniff to blitz, and the little gutter runner charged at the beastman. Leaping into the air, he threw all 98 pounds soaking wet (literally!) of rodent body at Taramino. The collision was just enough to push the beastman off the pitch, where the crowd stomped on him, grabbed away the ball and threw it up field.

“I justs thoughts of itsss like dodging in reverse,” said Sniff of his miracle sideline blitz. “Insteads of scampering aways from the beastman, I trieds to scamper though hims.”

Brownrat ran into Brutes’ territory, scooped the ball off the muddy pitch, and sprinted toward paydirt. But he wasn’t able to break into the clear, as a beastman grabbed the gutter runner by the tail and slammed him onto the pitch. From there, a muddy scrum broke out near midfield. The Brutes regained possession of the ball, but Filthasmellfia line rat Doormouse Goddirt threw a fist spike into the beastman ball carrier’s ribs, and the ball bounced off a few wet paws and hands before splashing into a mud puddle right beside Brownrat, who still lay stunned on the pitch.

Shaking off the cobwebs, Brownrat rolled through the mud to dodge away from the beastman beside him, grabbed the ball, got to his feet ,and raced up field into the clear. Golgoth “Tainted Son” gave chase but was unable to catch Brownrat, falling at the gutter runner’s feet as the rat high-stepped his way into the endzone to give the Fleagles a 2-1 win.

A.J. Brown rat scampers off for the winning TD as Golgoth loses his footing behind him.

“In this game, you got to be tough and you got to be lucky,” said Spearinme on the unlikely win. “And sometimes, like today, when you’re not being that tough and nearly half your rats are feeding fleas in the KO and casualty boxes, well, then you just got to be extra lucky.”

Fleagles Squeak Out 1-1 Tie in Sloppy but Physical Performance vs. Verminlords

The Filthasmellfia Fleagles kicked off their inaugural season in the UKBBL’s Kolsa Hills East division with a sloppy but physical 1-1 tie vs. the Verminlords. The Verminlords got their TD from gutter runner Jonny B Goode, while the Fleagles got their late-game equalizer from Squeakwon Barkley, who led all rats with 45 rushing yards. Surprisingly, the Fleagles, who have historically relied on speed and finesse, out-bashed their opponents with 5 combined casualties and KOs on the day, including the murder of linerat Bob Tail and the injury of rat ogre The Big Show, who suffer a severely bruised tail.

Barkley scores the equalizer late in the second half to salvage a tie for the Fleagles.

“I told my players before the game, ‘don’t worry about the snout—go for the tail,’ ” said Filthasmellfia Coach Nickon Spearinme on the team’s approach to taking on the rat ogre. “Those things are prehensile, and that means they’re sensitive too. Getting Big Show off the field in the first half was huge for us. Not just because it removed their biggest physical threat, but also because it removed the swarm of fleas following him around, which made it hard for me to see the field.”

Spearinme’s difficulty seeing the field coupled with problems communicating with his players was evident early in the game in several costly mistakes that enabled the Verminlords to quickly take advantage. After receiving the opening kick, Goode broke into the open deep in Fleagles territory after a curious move by Fleagles blitzer Ratdon Grime. While Filthasmellfia was attempting to slow down the Verminlords drive, Grime charged one of the linerats blocking for Goode. Rather than blitzing the player however, Grime ran up to him and apparently began to try to dance around him in a triangle pattern. The Verminlord linerat merely hissed at Grime in confusion and then took him to the ground with a swift claw to the face.

“Yeah, I’m still working out some kinks with the skaven language,” explained Spearinme, a human coach trying to manage a skaven team for the first time in his career. “At first, I thought it was basically just the common tongue with a lot of extra s’s, squeaks, and  hisses thrown in there. I didn’t realize when I told Grime to ‘blitzes-squeak,’ that word actually means ‘celebrate the Underfather by dancing around your opponent in the form of the three bars crossed.’ Anyway, lesson learned. We’re going to work this week to get that sorted out for the next game.”

The miscue allowed the well-positioned Verminlords to score easily with a few minutes left in the half. Filthasmellfia’s coaching struggles continued on their own possession as another questionable failed dodge left gutter runner A.J. Brownrat exposed to a brutal hit from a Verminlord blitzer that separated him from the ball, ending any potential threat the Fleagles could mount to tie before half time.

In the melee that followed, however, Fleagles linerat Jake Smelliot found himself snout to snout with The Big Show. As he appeared to try to flee from the rat ogre in a panic, Smelliot stepped on the hulking brute’s tail, knocking him out of the game.

“Yessss, I’s definitey’s dids that on purposes,” said Smelliot. “I was nots running aways. I was going for the tail, like coach saids.”

The Big Show yelps in pain as Smelliot stomps on his tail, curiously running in the opposite direction.

With the Big Show off the field for the second half, Filthasmellfia was able to put together a long drive that allowed gutter runner Squeakwon Barkley to break deep into Verminlords territory. After losing and recovering the ball and then stalling for the final minutes, Barkely crossed the goal line to salvage a tie for the Fleagles, despite the fact that they were thoroughly outcoached in the game.

“We’re going to have to clean that up if we want to have any shot in this league,” said Spearinme. “To try to improve our communication, I’m planning on taking the rats out to a team dinner tonight. I don’t know much about what these guys like to eat, but I’m thinking a fondue joint might be a good call.”