Words by Werner Splitz.

“We’re pulling the funding, Werner. We grossly overestimated how popular the workings of a very small North London bowling league would be with the German public.”

The call from my editor at the Düsseldorf Daily came as a huge surprise. I had assumed the King Pins had become household names back home by now. I’d even been talking to a company about merchandising the players – bobblehead figurines, commemorative plates, a series of bowling-themed videos starring the team aimed at kids about how to be a gracious loser. But that was all crumbling down around me.

“We need you back as soon as possible. By my estimate, if you catch the steamer leaving tonight you’ll be home in less than 17 days, assuming the coal reserves hold. Your family misses you too.”

Verdammt, my family. I’d actually forgotten I had one. My wife Mitzi, my son Fritz and my daughter Aperol, all as caring and supportive as they are improbably named. I hadn’t spoken to them in months, and not only because there’s somehow no reception in the back of the Diddler’s van. But I couldn’t let all this get in my head: I had a job to do. The Premier League Bowling finale needed to be covered, regardless of what my editor or the German public thought.

“I didn’t think we’d make it this far” Sheriff tells me, handing in her six-guns to security at Rowans so she doesn’t set off the metal detector. I ask what she means, as there’s no way a team can be eliminated from the league. “Just physically. We’ve managed to avoid injuries, arrests, untimely deaths, anything like that.” I remind her that one-time team member King Prawn is still missing, presumed trafficked, and she asks who that is.

Aside from that aforementioned disappeared Estonian, the only King Pin who can’t make the final is the Diddler, due to being extradited abroad for an unavoidable court appearance. The large roster is designed to baffle the other three teams into submission, constantly rotating mediocre player after mediocre player until the order is so confusing it makes everyone too dizzy to bowl. It is a tactic that works in neither theory nor practice.

The first game brought big scores from Paul/Barry Chuckem and Rosamund Strike and respectable totals from the rest of the team, including a second appearance from new team member Checkmate. “Bowling’s a lot like chess” she tells me, incorrectly. “The team captain, or the ‘Queen,’ can bowl on any lane they like, but pawns can only bowl straight down. A bishop, like me, bowls diagonally onto the next lane. Once per game, there’s the multiball frame – that’s when you can bowl three balls at once for big points. It’s all very tactical.” None of this is correct. That last point isn’t even close to being a chess rule. I smile and wish her good luck. She gets up to bowl and yells ‘first serve! Advantage!”

The less said about game two, the better. Sheriff shoots off one of her own toes after a gutterball. The Surgeon succumbs to trauma and flatlines, then blames the result on the team being underfunded. The team wins five measly points this game, four of which are won by Bazooka alone, but this brings me no joy as I have always considered him smug and unlikeable.

By the third game of the match, the King Pins are struggling against their greatest athletic foe – alcohol. The entire team is collapsing under the weight of rock-bottom expectations and cheap lager. The scores are mysteriously scrubbed from existence right after the game finished, but at least half the squad failed to crack 100. Barry/Paul Chuckem makes a drunken tenderstem broccoli-based bet with godless abomination Woof and immediately crumbles faster than the Berlin Wall after one David Hasselhoff concert, bowling his worst game of the season. The King Pins finish a distant and expected last.

I present some end of season awards with my esteemed fellow journalist Gutther Bawl. The mood is high and his accent is suspiciously inconsistent. I look out over the balcony down to Rowans and hold my fashionably practical bucket hat to my heart. I wasn’t ready to go back. My editor had already lined up to fly me out to the Canary Islands in October to cover the three-day bowling festival ‘Tenpinerife!’ but I knew I had some soul-searching to do. Following the King Pins on their inaugural season might not have taught me anything about sportsmanship, winning, bowling technique and strategy, natural talent, fair play, competitiveness, lane etiquette or leadership, but they did teach me about one thing: acceptance. So I’m taking their message to heart and travelling the globe to see where I can find some acceptance of my own. I don’t know when I’ll be back.

This was Werner Splitz, reporting from…the unknown.

If you have any knowledge on the whereabouts or wellbeing of Herr Splitz, please contact his family or the Düsseldorf Daily newspaper immediately.