Consider the arithmetic.

Thornbury Lancers: 51 points. Caravel Harriers: 51 points. Ashwick Stoneflies: 50 points.

One round remaining. Three matches on Saturday. Three clubs who have spent six months and twenty-five rounds arriving at a margin of a single point.

The last time the final round of the Ringball League produced a three-way title race was 1984, when Fernwich, Old Coldharbour, and the Lancers entered the final Saturday separated by two points. Fernwich won. Old Coldharbour collapsed. The Lancers finished third and their coach resigned on the pitch.

Saturday promises something at least as dramatic.

What each team needs:

The Lancers travel to Dunmore Eagles. A win secures the title regardless of other results — they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over Caravel after splitting their two meetings. Jens Aldric, the finest centrist in the league and the leader of Thornbury’s relentless campaign, has scored four rings in each of his last two matches. The Lancers have not lost away from home since November.

Dunmore, comfortable in mid-table, have nothing to play for — except pride, and the chance to ruin someone’s season. They beat the Stoneflies at home earlier in the campaign and pushed Caravel to the final quarter in February.

Caravel Harriers host Fernwich Falcons. The defending champions — back-to-back title holders until Saturday decides otherwise — need to win and hope the Lancers drop points. Oska Dain, whom most neutral observers consider the finest player in the league, has been subdued by Stoneflies standards in recent weeks but remains the most dangerous single player on any given court. The Harriers have won nine consecutive home matches.

Fernwich are mid-table and safe, but they have lost only twice at home all season and are a proud, physical side. They gave the Stoneflies a bruising afternoon in Round 23.

Ashwick Stoneflies host Millhaven. The Stoneflies must win and hope that either the Lancers or Caravel fail to do likewise. At a point behind, they need results elsewhere. But they have won five consecutive matches, they are at home at the Ashwick Oval where the crowd of fourteen thousand generates a noise that visiting teams find genuinely unsettling, and they have Fen Barlow.

Barlow, who is twenty-two and playing his ninth senior match, has scored in six consecutive fixtures. His decisive ring against Caravel on Saturday — four minutes from the end, in front of a capacity crowd, with the Harriers pressing for the equaliser — was the moment that transformed this title race from a two-horse contest into a three-way scramble.

Dov Marsden, the Stoneflies’ thirty-six-year-old captain, has been playing ringball since before Barlow was born. He has never won a championship. On Saturday, at Ashwick Oval, he will lead his team out for what may be his last realistic chance.

“I am trying not to think about it in those terms,” Marsden said, when asked about the weight of the occasion. He did not quite succeed. “Sixteen years. You think you have time, and then you look up and you don’t.”

The permutations:

If all three win, the Lancers and Caravel finish on 53, Stoneflies on 52 — and the title goes to the Lancers on head-to-head.

If the Lancers lose and both Caravel and the Stoneflies win, Caravel take the title on 53 to the Stoneflies’ 52.

If Caravel lose and both the Lancers and Stoneflies win, the Lancers take the title on 53 to the Stoneflies’ 52.

If both the Lancers and Caravel lose and the Stoneflies win, the Stoneflies take it on 52 to 51 and 51.

If all three lose — but that way lies madness.

The matches kick off simultaneously at 2 PM on Saturday. This newspaper will carry a special evening edition with full reports.

Six days. One point. Forty-two years since the league has seen anything like it.

“Everything else,” Barlow said on Saturday night, still in his match kit, still breathing hard, “is noise.”

He has been saying that for three weeks now. On Saturday, we will find out whether he is right.