Orin Blackshaw completed a full contact training session at the Thornhill training ground this morning — his first since the Merchants’ Cup final on 14 February — and is expected to be named in Phillipa Corbett’s squad for Saturday’s Premier Division match against Port Caravel Wanderers at Bridgewater Stadium.

The centre-back, who scored the equaliser in that final and then limped through the closing stages on a knee that Dr Lena Sorrens later described with the phrase “significant inflammation of medial structures,” has been absent for thirty-two days. In that time, Bobington Rovers have played five league matches, won two, drawn one, and lost two. They sit fourteenth with thirty-six points, ten clear of relegation — comfortable enough that Blackshaw’s return is a luxury rather than a necessity.

But luxury is the wrong word. Blackshaw is the best defender at the club.

“He trained fully,” Corbett said after the session, in the manner of a woman who had been waiting five weeks to say those two words. “He looked sharp. His movement was good, his timing was there. We’ll make a decision later in the week.”

This is Corbett’s customary way of saying that a player will start unless something goes wrong between now and Saturday.

Theo Harwick, the twenty-year-old academy graduate who has deputised with a maturity that belied his two previous starts — both September defeats — can hold his head high. In five matches, Harwick won thirty-seven aerial duels, made a goal-line clearance against Caravel City, and earned the quiet respect of the Bridgewater Stadium crowd. He will likely return to the bench on Saturday. He has earned the right to be bored there.

Port Caravel Wanderers arrive at Bridgewater with history in their kitbag. It was against Port Caravel, on the final day of the 1973 season, that Rovers secured the 1-0 victory that preserved their Premier Division status. That was fifty-three years ago. Most of the men who played that match are dead or elderly. But the fixture retains a flavour of consequence that has nothing to do with the current table.

Port Caravel sit eleventh, on forty-one points, with nothing much to play for except professional pride and the satisfaction of winning at a ground where they have not won since 2019.

Corbett, whose contract expires at the end of the season and whose future remains the subject of the kind of speculation that she refuses to acknowledge, will name her squad on Friday.

Nadia Osei, who has scored four goals in five league matches since Blackshaw’s absence — a run that has done more for Rovers’ survival arithmetic than any other factor — is expected to start on the right wing. Kael Dunmore, whose cup-final heroics now seem a long time ago in the rhythms of the league campaign, has been reliable rather than spectacular. Jamie Harte, whose first league goal against Ashwick Borough was the kind of tap-in that suggests good things about a player’s positioning, will compete for a midfield place.

Kick-off is at 3 PM on Saturday. Bridgewater Stadium is expected to be approximately three-quarters full — a crowd of around 36,000, in a city that is also thinking about beacons, budgets, and a theatre that needs 3,800 more florins.

The city can think about all of these things at once. That is what cities do.