Round 14 - Albion v Dings Crusaders

With half the season completed, sixth placed Albion entertain 9th placed Dings Crusaders at Brickfields.

Coached by former Albion favourite, Luke Arscott, the Crusaders were promoted to National One this season. This season has shown some inconsistency, with five wins and a draw. They are also not a team that travel well with only one win on the road at Sedgley Park. The first win saw the Crusaders romp to a 46-29 win against Albion, running in seven tries in the process and this fixture will be targeted by DC as a rare away win.

Their impressive home record has pushed their tries per game to 4.15 although this falls to 3.15 for away games. In comparison Albion are scoring 3.46 per game rising to 3.69 for home games. A considerable proportion of the Crusaders' tries have come from their front row, particularly by the hookers, Tomas Gwilliam and Tom Gollop. They have also been effective through the centres and wings with Solomon O'Brien-Taufa leading the try scoring among the backs.

The scoring pattern of the Crusaders shows that the periods before and after half time is when they pick up the tempo, whereas Albion have been the opposite, being quick out of the blocks and turning it up for the final period.

The referee for the day will be Iain Kiy who places quite high on the card index at 1.8 per game. Whilst Mr Kiy hasn't had the privilege of officiated an Albion match, his last appearance at this level was for the Dings v Sale fixture a month ago. Dings received one of the 3 cards shown that day.

To date the Crusaders have accrued 9 yellow cards as opposed to Albion with just 2.

Weather. Light rain clears before the game with a gentle to moderate westerly breeze. Temperatures should rise for the weekend, but still quite cool.

Forecast: A win for Albion, but potentially a banana skin.

Other games of note: Richmond (1st) v Rosslyn Park (4th) - whilst the likely result (a win for Richmond) will give Albion a chance to move up the table, this fixture represents the last opportunity for the rest of the league to cut the gap to the top. Richmond will then have a sequence of 9 games that they would expect to win relative easily before taking on the other three of the current top 5 sides.