On Saturday, three ringball matches will be played simultaneously across the country. When they are finished, one team will be champions. It is possible — likely, even — that several thousand people in Bobington will spend Saturday afternoon doing nothing productive whatsoever.

The table entering Round 26, the final round of the season:

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

The Lancers travel to the Dunmore Eagles. The Harriers host the Fernwich Falcons. The Stoneflies host Millhaven. All three matches begin at 2 PM.

The permutations are these. A Lancers win secures the title regardless of other results — their ring differential is superior to Caravel’s. A Caravel win coupled with a Lancers loss or draw hands the championship to the Harriers. If the Stoneflies win and both the Lancers and Caravel lose, the championship travels to Ashwick for the first time in sixteen years.

There are, in total, twenty-seven possible combinations of results. In nine of them, the Lancers are champions. In nine, the Harriers retain their title. In seven, the Stoneflies complete the most remarkable late-season surge in modern ringball. In two — both involving three-way draws, which have occurred exactly once in the league’s 42-year modern history — the championship would be decided by ring differential, and the Lancers would prevail.

Jens Aldric, the Lancers’ centrist, spoke to reporters at the team’s Thornbury training ground this morning. He was, as is his custom, economical.

“We go to Dunmore. We win. That is the plan.”

Asked whether he was aware of the permutations, he said: “I am aware that if we win, it doesn’t matter what anyone else does. That is the only permutation I need.”

Aldric has scored 14 rings this season, the most by a Lancers centrist in a decade. In last Saturday’s 32-19 demolition of Coldharbour, he scored three and assisted on every other ring in the third quarter. He is 28 years old, six years a Lancer, and has never won a championship.

In Ashwick, the mood is different. Dov Marsden, the Stoneflies’ 36-year-old centrist and captain, has waited sixteen years for a title. His team must win and hope that both rivals lose — the narrowest of the three paths. And yet the Stoneflies have won five consecutive matches, their longest streak in four years, powered by the extraordinary emergence of Fen Barlow.

Barlow is 22. He has scored in nine consecutive matches. Last Saturday, his ring with four minutes remaining broke the Caravel Harriers’ resistance and kept the Stoneflies’ title hopes alive. Marsden, who was on his knees at the final whistle, said afterwards: “He doesn’t know what pressure is. He just throws.”

The Harriers, meanwhile, have the simplest task and the most complex psychology. They are defending champions. They have Oska Dain, who is arguably the finest ringball player in the country. They are at home, against a Fernwich side that has nothing to play for. And yet they have lost twice in four matches — including, critically, last Saturday at Ashwick.

Coach Wil Sørensen has been characteristically guarded. “We play Fernwich. We prepare for Fernwich. The rest is noise.”

Dain has said nothing publicly since last Saturday’s defeat. His silence, for those who follow these things, is louder than any press conference.

The league has not seen a final round this closely contested since 1984, when the Port Caravel Dockers beat Caldwell Athletic on the last play of the last match to clinch the title by a single point. That match is still talked about. Saturday’s three-way finish may surpass it.

Three cities. Three teams. One Saturday. Bring a wireless.