Maidenhead locked in four-way battle for survival that could go down to the wire

Drew Prince, one of Maids’ five try scorers at Camberley on Saturday. Photo: Paul Morgan

--

Maidenhead were a whisker away from moving clear of Camberley and Hammersmith at the bottom of the Regional 1 South Central table on Saturday.

Instead, Camberley managed to turn the tables on them in the closing stages for a thrilling 36-35 victory, and that result – combined with Wimbledon’s magnificent 38-31 home win over Worthing – leaves them in a four-way battle for survival that could yet go down to the wire.

And even if they do manage to keep themselves out of the bottom two, they’ll likely still play one or two relegation play-off matches to determine what level they’ll play at next season.

“If you look at the league now there are three of us on 23 points,” said Mobbs-Smith. “One of us is going down automatically and the other two are playing off realistically.

“One of us, if we had a big run, might be able to catch Worthing. But the three of us are playing to ensure we’re in the play-off, not automatically relegated.

“We still have to play Wimbledon. Camberley still have to play Hammersmith and Wimbledon.

“They could win both or lose both of those. We still have to play Wimbledon and Worthing and if we lose both of those, we’re probably going to be the team in trouble. And if we win both, it’s suddenly a big task for whoever didn’t win their two games.”

He added: “The results suggest Wimbledon are picking up. They beat Worthing in another high scoring game. It was probably no different to our game. One of the three could possibly catch Worthing, to pull them into the play-offs, but it probably won’t be possible to get two teams past them. It’s still 12 points difference.”

If Maids can pick up anything from Saturday’s home game with Jersey, it will be a huge bonus. Jersey have won all 14 of their matches so far, scoring 644 points in the process. Old Alleynians are the only other team in the division who’ve come close to scoring 500 points (489), so Maids know they’ll have their work cut out to even give the leaders a decent game. But last year, they shocked the whole league by beating them by a single point in one of the surprise results of the season.

“It will be a very tough ask, but we beat them last year and we’ll be hoping for something similar,” he said. “If they watched the video of us scoring all those tries this weekend, they’ll be doing their best to make sure we can’t do that again.

“But I don’t think this week’s matches will define who is in the most trouble. We’re playing Jersey, Camberley are away at Old Alleynians and Wimbledon are at Farnham, another tough place to go because their home record is so good.”

This weekend’s results leave Maids requiring one or two surprise results between now and the end of the season, but Mobbs-Smith feels that was always going to be the case, irrespective of Saturday’s result at Camberley.

“I think that would have been the case anyway,” he said. “But it makes us more determined and focused to do that (claim a couple of surprise results).

“We know how important every point will be. Any win we can get will be vital. But we can’t factor in what Hammersmith, Camberley and Wimbledon do.

“We can only really control what happens when we play them. We have no control over what Hammersmith do in their next four games, they could win their next four games and go above us.

“It’s not that we haven’t tried our best, it’s just that some very tight games have gone against us this season. Last weekend was an example of that. The game at Hammersmith went our way, because he missed that final kick, but that’s sport and it’s why we love sport.”