Dougie Flockhart

Will this be the game that sees the Knights turn their season around and commence winning ways? Saturday sees 2 current relegation play-off sides face each other as both Plymouth Albion (9th) & the Knights (11th) are in the relegation zone. With Coventry (being out of the zone and only 1 point above Albion in 8th) facing 2nd-placed Nottingham, Plymouth will see a win as a possible chance to get out of the zone.

Plymouth Albion have played 6, won 2 and lost 4, gaining a losing and a winning bonus point in the process.
Losing v Exeter, winning v Bees. Their points difference is 30 points to the better of the Knights single league point.

Plymouth Albion’s confidence will be higher than the yet-to-win Knights’ even though Moseley beat them last week as they beat the Cornish Pirates when they were at home, then won a losing bonus point against Exeter when they were away.

Head-to-head in Devon, Plymouth have won 3, lost 1 against the Knights. This season Albion have won 2 of their 3 home games. They lost to Bedford, which is no disgrace as can be sen from Bedford’s league standing.
Their fly half, Kieran Hallet is the Championship’s 3rd highest points scorer and the top drop goal scorer with 2!
Centre, Ben Mercer and winger Geoff Griffiths both have a brace of tries. Dougie Flockhart is our only player with 2 tries.

Plymouth have scored 11 tries (Knights 8), 6 of which were at home but nearly half were in the last 20 mins. Try scoring by position has been quite even, the full back followed by wingers having just scored the most.

Albion have had 2 less than the Knights’ 16 tries scored against them, evenly spread home and away and fairly even throughout the match except the last 20 minutes have seen nearly half of the tries scored against them. With try-scoring both for and against predominantly being scored in the last 20 mins, that may suggest that they play more open, expansive rugby in the last quarter which can lead to try scoring but also stretch their defence.

At the foot of the table this weekend also sees bottom-placed Bees play at home to top-placed and unbeaten Exeter.
Tenth-placed Rotherham Titans face 3rd placed Bedford up the road and Moseley in seventh are away to Bristol (4th).

This will be a hard-fought encounter as both teams strive to win and with 8th, 10th & 12th placed teams playing, 2nd, 3rd & 1st (or the top 3), it’ll be seen as an opportunity by Plymouth Albion. The Knights need more than 1 win to get out of the zone but ‘the sooner started, the sooner mended’.
 

Jamie Crawford