It’s never easy being a Dons fan, is it?
S/O, I can’t remember anyone saying we should only look up, not down. Ironically, they were right! We need to look up now to see if we can catch Hunslet!
The structure of our relatively uncompetitive 10 team league means that in order to win the league you can’t really afford to lose more than two matches. Although, we’ve won 10 out of 12, it feels as though we’re on the brink of failing should we lose another one.
In a post after the Hunslet defeat, I wrote:
I'd say Dewsbury have a 95% chance of going up with Dons, Oldham and Hunslet each having around a 35% chance. (95 + 35 +35 +35 = 200)
If my 35% assessment is about right, promotion is less likely than likely. This explains why most of us are probably feeling a little more downbeat than we’d like.
I think the underlying reasons for the way we feel is that we know from our performances that we’re more vulnerable than we perhaps look on paper. As S/O said, our points difference is inferior, we’re capable of leaking points to a 12-man Skolars team, and we don’t seem able to play to our best for a full 80 minutes.
It’s not all doom and gloom because should we avoid defeat in our remaining games, if Hunslet beat Dewsbury, we could still finish top providing we beat Dewsbury at home. It feels like a tough ask but it’s still possible.
If we drop points before Dewsbury, it’s quite likely that we might need to beat Dewsbury to finish second.
Considering how Hunslet had the upper-hand over us recently, we don’t want to have to play them at their place again. This is perhaps what would happen if we finished third. I thought we were a shade lucky when we narrowly beat them 18-16 at home earlier in the season.
The Hunslet v Oldham game is key next weekend. An Oldham win would probably be preferable for us.
We really need to do a job on Midlands and show we can play for 80 minutes, improve our points diff, and get on the front foot for the Worky and N Wales games. The N Wales concerns me most but Worky won’t be a pushover at their place.
If we’re going to get promoted, we need to improve match-by-match between now and the end of the season. If we don't, we could be consigned to this league for another season.
