Having secured the League Title last week at Exmouth, BSRFC's First team ends the season with a home game against Barnes, who are desperate for points to avoid the second automatic relegation place. Worthing currently sit in this invidious position, but finish with a home game against bottom-placed Exmouth, while London Irish Wild Geese and Barnstaple, who are currently one point ahead of Barnes face promotion play-off contenders, Chinnor and OEs, respectively. If Worthing get the expected win, Barnes will need at least 2 points this week, since they have fewer wins than both their other rivals.
Having won their last two matches, following several successive losses with only 6 victories to their name all season, Barnes appear to have found some belated form, with a hard-fought win at Canterbury followed by a drubbing handed out last week to Clifton. Unfortunately, there is little intelligence available on these matches from the other clubs' websites. We therefore only have the Rugby Paper's brief reports to go on, which again offer only limited insights. It does look as if winger, Fraser Carlisle might take some watching and skipper, Jamie Collins in the second row looks to be a key man. Recent teamlists - perhaps unsurprisingly - show significant personnel changes from the side we face back on the first day of the season, notably a totally different front row, but then Will Simmonds, Will Roberts, Jon George and Matt Tomlinson were all missing that day and Steve Ball only came on from the bench, so little can be read into that.
After last week's big win in front of over 120 traveling supporters, Stortford will be hoping for a huge home crowd and, with over 430 booked in for lunch, they surely won't be disappointed and half decent weather might well see an all-time record attendance. The team will undoubtedly want to round off this historic season with another big performance to create a further memorable occasion for the Club but, as at Exmouth, will know that nothing can be taken for granted and a final win for the season will have to be worked for.