Bristol showdown bigger than a cup final for Moseley
Very few of the Moseley supporters who witnessed their team seize the National Trophy at Twickenham last April would have even dreamed their side would be playing in an even bigger match quite so soon.
Yet that is the prospect which awaits them on Saturday, as promotion favourites Bristol come to Billesley Common looking to fine tune their preparations for the post-season.
Bristol are on auto-pilot at present, guaranteed their top seeding, in first place in the table and unbeaten in the league since October 24. They can afford to either tinker, go full steam ahead or perhaps both.
Moseley’s concerns, however, are considerably more immediate. In theory they can afford to lose providing they pick up two bonus points and results go their way elsewhere. In reality, they have to beat the league leaders.
Success should guarantee a place in next year’s Championship with all the trappings and trimmings dining at the RFU’s professional rugby table brings.
Such things like £300,000 in central funding, exposure on national television and the right to tell potential sponsors, spectators and players they might care be part of a club going places. Failure jeopardises all of that.
And ask the men responsible for trying to rebuild the club whether they’d swap last spring’s cup win for this spring’s safety and they’d be hard pressed to answer.
The EDF Energy National Trophy was worth a day out and somewhere in the region £50,000. Victory on Saturday would bring so much more.
Not that defeat robs them of anything just yet but it will condemn Moseley to a bottom four finish and a place in the relegation play-offs.
They will then have six matches, against Coventry, Bees and AN Other to book their place at the 2010-11 table.
The observant amongst you will had noted the geographical spread of that notional bottom four. Indeed it is only the presence of either Plymouth or Rotherham that stopped the Union from renaming the Pool C play off, the Worst Midlands Championship.
Clearly those who wear the Red and Black are intent on making sure Second City interest in that particular spat is kept to a minimum.
The fact they have lost their last five matches and not beaten a higher-ranked side all season - seventh-placed Doncaster were second bottom when they were downed in September - has not dimmed the public protestations that a top eight finish can be secured.
And more defiant than any other is Neil Mason, their talismanic captain who juts his jaw out, both metaphorically and physically, and whose Black Knight approach to the sport - ‘tis a mere flesh wound’ - makes him the one Moseley player opponents know they have to contain.
And the 27-year-old is in determined mood. “It’s a massive game for the club,” he admits. “The boys are all geared up for that game, everyone is. We know what we have got to do, it’s obvious to everyone.
