Plymouth Albion prepare for Doncaster Knights

Plymouth Albion will face the Doncaster Knights on the opening day of the RFU Championship. The match will be held at the 5,000 capacity Castle Park Stadium, which is the home of Doncaster, on 6th September.

Albion’s first home game will be the following week, when they’ll face Nottingham Rugby at Brickfields. Both teams pre-season begins this week. Plymouth face the Cornish All Blacks, and will go on to play Neath, Hartpury College and a Bristol XV side. Doncaster will play Neath first, and then Swansea RFC and lastly a Leicester Tigers XV at the end of the month.

The last time these two met was during the 2012/13 season, in which Doncaster were relegated to the National League One. They locked horns on the opening day of that season at Brickfields on the 1st September, and Plymouth ran out with a close fought 27-22 win. In the return fixture, on the last day of the season (20th April 2013) Plymouth completed the double over Doncaster, beating them, in an even closer game, 26-22.

Last season saw Plymouth struggle and consequently they finished 8th out of the 12 teams. They won just 6 games from their 23 matches, and only managed to accumulate 40 points. The Knights had an extremely good season in the National League One. They finished 1st which saw them be promoted back into the Championship just a year after being relegated. They collected 122 points from their 30 games, having won 25 of them. Their attacking game was particularly impressive, having gathered 18 try bonuses and scoring an incredible 943 points in total (which comes out as 31.4 points per game).

These are two clubs that will most likely finish mid-table to the bottom half, and therefore it will be a closely fought contest. However, I believe Albion will win this game by a converted try, and the game will finish 23-16 to the travelling team.