The following is a fiction piece written by Leon Osborne. Leon is a good friend of mine, one of the testers behind Slamjet Stadium and a very funny guy! He's written this piece about the game and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so I hope you do too.
Which was a pretty good record by all accounts.
Oh sure, he’d been shot at a dozen times, but you only really count the times you’re hit. Girls dig scars, they say. They don’t dig the potential for scars.
This match was looking nasty when the fixture went up, now that it was in play it looked like a three headed mutant tiger that had escaped from the zoo, pumped itself up on steroids, developed an anger management problem and discovered its brother had been sleeping with its wife.
This was the grudge match between the Cortex Crusaders and the Space Hogs. How the rivalry had escalated to this level was lost to the mists of time. There were tales of a hand-ball on the side of the Cortex Crusaders - which was unlikely, what with them being a brain in a jar and lacking all major appendages. Some told tales that a group of Space Hogs thought they could place a Cortex Crusader inside their own skull and it would make them smarter. Then they kidnapped a few Crusaders and got as far as attempting to snort them into their skulls before being caught. That couldn’t be true, surely no Hog would come up with a plan as complex as that… and clearly all that would do is give the Crusader a body to move around in.
The grudge was probably just some marketing scam.
The game was a little less than half way through and so far both teams had lost about 33 players each. Experience has taught the managers of both teams well and luckily they bring enough reserves with them to make up for the high injury rate whenever they play.
Garrison Jones, an old, now retired, referee told Glass that one time the Crusaders and the Hogs ran out of players to field before the end of the game. They were each down to their last player and Snorg Tusker of the Hogs ate Venus Neuros of the Crusaders. Venus wasn’t one to give up with out a fight though and managed to choke Snorg Tusker to death as he was swallowed. Venus was then stuck in Tusker’s oesophagus and, without her special brain jar to support her, she suffocated. Officials said the game had to run until the timer ended and that staff from the teams should be fielded since they had run out of players. Play resumed with both teams fielding office admin. The Crusaders' accountant was swiftly crushed by a young swine from payroll and a lawyer (Glass forgets which team he played for) got his tie stuck in the hoverbike mechanism and beheaded himself.
That particular match ended with the Hogs winning by one goal, scored by the guy that refilled the vending machine in the Hogs' locker room.
This year the Hogs were winning, up by 3 goals. The Crusaders weren’t playing their best but Glass was pretty sure they were going to win.
After all, the bribe they had given him had topped the one he got from Hogs by 2000 credits. It wasn’t easy being a referee.
