There is a particular kind of away fixture that every manager dreads and every supporter, secretly, relishes. A compact ground in a single-industry town. A team with nothing to lose and a centre-forward who lives off crosses. A crowd that arrives angry and gets louder.

Duncastle on a Saturday afternoon is that fixture.

Bobington Rovers travel to the Coalfield Ground tomorrow for a match that sits, on paper, between a side in fourteenth and a side in sixteenth — a meeting of the mediocre, a collision of the merely adequate. Anyone who thinks that way has not been to the Coalfield Ground recently.

Duncastle have won three of their last four home matches, all by a single goal, all through the same mechanism: set pieces delivered into the penalty area and met by the head of Marcus Dunbar, who leads the Premier Division with seven headed goals and who does not, by all accounts, believe in the concept of a fair aerial contest.

“Dunbar doesn’t jump for the ball,” said one opposition defender who faced him recently and asked not to be named. “He jumps through you.”

Corbett’s Preparation

Phillipa Corbett has devoted much of this week to the problem. Wednesday’s training session was given over entirely to set-piece defence — the first time the manager has dedicated a full day to a single tactical element since the club’s pre-season camp.

The specific concern is the right-hand corner. Duncastle’s delivery from that side — usually taken by left-footed winger Alfie Crewe — consistently targets the near post, where Dunbar’s timing and power are most difficult to combat. Of his seven headed goals, four have come from right-side set pieces.

“We know what’s coming,” Corbett said at Thursday’s press conference. “The advantage of predictability is that you can prepare for it. The disadvantage is that they’ve been doing it all season and teams still can’t stop it.”

Theo Harwick, 20, will make his second consecutive start at centre-back in place of the injured Orin Blackshaw. Harwick acquitted himself well at Bridgewater against Haverford — winning both aerial duels in a brief cameo — but Saturday represents a different order of challenge. Dunbar is six foot three, twelve stone of commitment, and will test Harwick’s positioning as relentlessly as any player in the division.

Blackshaw, who is recovering from medial inflammation in his right knee, has been offering touchline instruction to Harwick throughout the week.

“He pulled me aside after Wednesday’s session,” Harwick said. “He said: ‘Don’t try to out-jump him. Read the flight and get there first.’ I’m going to try.”

Nadia Osei is fit. Ronan Cahill is available if Corbett opts for a third centre-back. Sully Marsh will start in goal, as he has for nine years and counting.

What’s at Stake

Rovers sit fourteenth with twenty-nine points from twenty-five matches — six clear of the relegation places, comfortable enough in theory but far from safe with thirteen matches remaining. A win at Duncastle would lift them as high as eleventh, depending on other results, and would extend the cushion to nine points over Millwall in seventeenth.

A defeat would do no immediate damage to the arithmetic but would hand Duncastle a lifeline and create the dispiriting prospect of three increasingly difficult fixtures ahead: Caravel City at home next Saturday, then Thornbury Academicals away on the 12th of March.

“We don’t look at the table,” Corbett said, unconvincingly. “We look at the next match.”

The next match is at the Coalfield Ground, where the tea is terrible, the wind comes off the coal tips, and Marcus Dunbar is waiting at the near post.

Kick-off is at three o’clock.