Fleagles Manage 1-1 Tie Despite Heavy Losses vs. UKBBL Orcs

The Filthasmellfia Fleagles lost 6 players but not the game, managing a 1-1 tie vs. the aggressive and brutal UKBBL Orcs. A.J. Brownrat scored the lone TD for Filthasmellfia, while Juja got the equalizer for the Orcs. Despite managing to hold on for the tie, the Fleagles were thoroughly out-blocked 43-14 by the more physical orc squad, and the skaven armor did not hold up, with the rats suffering 5 casualties and 2 KOs on the day.

A.J . Brownrat dodges away from two orc defenders to put the Fleagles up 1-0 on an early scoop-and-score.

“We’re clearly going to need to make a move to get more physical as a squad, and I guess that means maybe heading to the slums of the Filthasmellfia undercity and seeing if we can recruit a rat ogre,” said Fleagles Coach  Nickon Spearinme after the game. “But honestly, the way this team’s armor is performing, and knowing how these rat ogres tend to be … temperamental, well, going that route could just lead to more of our own blood on the pitch.”

Filthasmellfia opened the scoring with a defensive touchdown in the first half after orc lineman Roach failed to cleanly secure the opening kick. Seeing their opportunity, the rats attempted to pounce. Ratdon Grime cleared a path on the eastern sideline, shoving orc blitzer Betty back so that A.J. Brownrat, Daratius Slay, and Kenfilth Gainsmell could skitter up the sideline and surround the ball deep in the Orcs' territory.

“Look, rats thrive on the misfortune of others, whether that’s spreading disease, stealing all the cheese out of the village larders, or sprinting up field when you fail to pick up the ball,” said Coach Spearinmne. “So I knew we needed to be aggressive to try to take advantage.”

The Orcs stayed calm despite the swarm of rats closing in on the ball in their backfield and began slowly bashing away Fleagles players. With gutter-runner like dexterity, Roach managed to snatch the bouncing ball out of the air amid all the bashing, despite the fact that Sniff was hanging off one of his legs and Slay was gnawing at his shoulder.

The aggressive strategy looked like it had failed the Fleagles, as the Orcs now seemed poised to bash through the over-committed defense. But Coach Spearinme didn’t pull back. “We were already pretty much all in at that point,” he explained. “So I figured we’d just go … What do you call it when you go even more all in? All-er in-er? Well, whatever you call it, that’s what we did.”

Spearinme signaled his players to continue harrying the ball carrier, and Grime dodged away from Betty, charged forward, and delivered a spinning back-paw to Roach’s chin as Slay bit into his Achilles tendon. The green brute tumbled to the turf, the ball bounced away, and the Fleagles now had possibly their last chance to take advantage.

Brownrat juked left and then spun right to get away from Big’un Blocker Arkan. Then he dove for the ball and snatched it up with his filth-crusted paws. Orc blitzer Tanya reached for him with a green fist much in the same way someone might reach out with a brick toward a rodent they’re trying to flatten. But the gutter runner leaped away with a lighting-quick dodge and sprinted into the endzone to give the Fleagles a 1-0 lead.

“Me’s knows me needs to be quick-fast to survive out there,” said Brownrat on how he was able to make such an unlikely series of agile moves to score the touchdown. “So my’s strategy-plan for scoring a touchdowns is pretty simples. I’d just tries to not gets killed-murdered. And if I’s not gets killed-murdered enough, sometimes me’s scores a touchdown.”

Despite Roach moving the Orcs deep into Fleagles’ territory after securing the ensuing kick off, Brownrat and his fellow gutter runners Devermin Sniff and Squeaquon Barkley surrounded the orc in the closing seconds to keep him from the endzone. In the process, however, they lost 3 more team members to orc fists in the final seconds and went into halftime up 1-0 on the scoreboard but down 11-5 in players.

“Worried? No, not at all,” said Coach Spearinme on his outlook on being short-handed for the second half. “It only takes one gutter runner to score a touchdown, and we still had 2.”

Nonetheless, Coach Spearinme seemed to take a conservative approach after receiving the second half kickoff, dropping all of his players back in a deep, withdrawn offense the elven teams have termed “the dakka.” With the team’s new thrower Skenny Snickett standing on his own goal line behind two blockers, while the gutter runners lined up wide, the Fleagles held the ball and waited for the Orcs to approach, as the clock ticked down.

The orcs closed in, and Snicektt hung in the pocket on the edge of his own goal line, patting the ball and making several pump fakes to try to confuse the approaching brutes. In a stunning display of cunning and intelligence, even Martin, the UKBBL Orcs’ untrained troll wasn’t fooled. The team pressed forward in a massive line of snarling green rage, crowding the Fleagles’ most dangerous scoring threat, Brownrat, with two players marking him and a third, Roach, nearby to make it hard for him to dodge away. But in so doing, the Orcs had also committed all of their players into Filthasmellfia’s half.

“This looked like our best chance to make a play,” said Coach Spearinme. “Those green-skinned fellas could smell blood … I mean, actually, we all could literally smell blood, because our team’s blood was all over the pitch by that point. But I mean metaphorically, they were coming in for the kill. But you can’t kill what you can’t catch, right? So I gave Snicket the signal to get the ball to Brownrat. All we needed was a catch, a couple of nifty dodges, and then he’d be off to the rat races.”

After a line-rat shoved away one of the orcs marking Brownrat, Snicket ran forward and handed the ball to his gutter runner. Martin grabbed for Brownrat’s shoulder, and loomed close enough to drool all over the gutter runner, but Brownrat took the hand-off cleanly, and dodged away from the hulking troll. A quick sprint up field looked sure to put the gutter runner in the clear with nothing to slow him down, ready to give the Fleagles a commanding 2-0 lead.

There was only one problem. As Brownrat dodged away from Martin, he ran directly into Roach’s elbow. That steel spiked armor pad in the snout did a bit more than slow the gutter runner down. It sent him sprawling to the pitch in a daze as the ball bounced away, and orc biltzer Juja quickly scooped it into his bloody hands.

Brownrat dodges away from the Orcs' troll Martin, smiling as he thinks he has a date with the endzone, little did he know he was headed toward a date with Juja's elbow instead.

From there, the Orcs made quick work of what little defense the rats could muster deep in their own territory. Bashing snouts, yanking out whiskers, and stomping on tails, they quickly cleared a path for Juja to score the equalizer, tying the game 1-1 a little more than halfway through the second half.

With only five Fleagles able to take the field for the ensuing kick-off, it looked like the Orcs would soon be able to get the ball back and bash their way to victory. But just before the ball was kicked, Spearinme was seen having a suspicious conversation with the goblin timekeeper. Afterwards, the gobbo appeared to start the game clock while the kick off was in the air, rather than waiting for the ball to be caught.

As a result of the extra time run-off, the Fleagles were able to stall in their own territory and run out the clock to preserve a 1-1 tie. “Hey, I like watching gutter runners skitter up and down the field scoring touchdowns as much as the next guy, but in order to do that they got to be able to run, or at least stand up,” Said Spearinme when asked about his suddenly conservative approach at the end of the game. “But there’s a time to be aggressive, and then there’s a time to pay off the ref to run out the clock, and … er, I mean, and then there’s a time to be a little more cautious."

Juja scores the tying TD with a cadre of orc blockers and very little resistance from the badly inured Fleagles.

The tie brings the Fleagles to 1-2-0 on season, currently in 5^th place in the UKBBL Kolsa Hills East Division. But the road ahead doesn’t look to get any easier for Filthasmellfia, as they prepare to face off against another orc squad in London Orcish B.B.F.C., who are currently undefeated, at 3-0 on the season. To make matters worse they’ll be taking the field without 4 players in their starting lineup, including 2 blitzers and 1 gutter runner.