The season that finished by torchlight
A summer storm took out the power an hour before the final, and the squads decided to play anyway. This is how the season ended, and who now has a nickname on the board.
Ten weeks and one blackout
The season had been tidy. Ten Thursday fixtures, two postponements for work shifts, and one captain who forgot her own squad's name and had to read it off the roster. The top four were settled a week early, which almost never happens, and the finals fortnight began with everyone expecting a quiet ending.
Then the storm arrived. About an hour before the final, a line of thunderstorms crossed the valley and half of Maitland lost power. Four of the eight finalists were in the dark, one squad leader was sitting in her car using a phone for a modem, and the referee, Luke Davidson, had a decision to make. The chat server filled with suggestions, nearly all of them kind and several of them impossible.
How it was settled
What the referee decided
Luke's ruling was simple. Nobody who lost power would forfeit, and the final would be played the next evening on a fresh server with the same maps and a coin toss for sides. He posted the decision within ten minutes, and nobody argued, which may be a record.
The final itself
Late Shift met Flood Plain, and the match took the best part of an hour and went to the last round. Flood Plain had the better ping and Late Shift had the better plan, and for once the plan won. The spectators stayed muted by agreement and typed at speed instead, so the text channel scrolled for several minutes after the final round ended.
What the winners chose
Late Shift's captain put her nickname on the board in the club room at the next first-Saturday meetup, then chose a short co-op game for the following community night on the grounds that everybody deserved a rest from competing. That is the entire reward, and the squad seemed happier with it than any trophy would have made them. The next Tuesday, the whole crew played it together with a pot of tea on every desk.