RUTHIN Town chairman Brian Griffiths admits that he never imagined the club would meet North Wales giants Rhyl in a league fixture.
With the Lilywhites’ surprise demotion from the Welsh Premier League last season, this Saturday marks the first part of the season’s big Vale of Clwyd derby.
Griffiths has been looking forward to the meeting ever since the fixtures for the season were released and he said this week: “It’s a major game for us.
“We didn’t envisage over the last couple of years we would be playing Rhyl in the league.
“In the cup, maybe, but not the league.”
Had the game been played a month ago, not too many people would have given Ruthin a chance of supplying a shock.
Ruthin appeared to be in dire straits at the end of November, on the back of four successive losses, three of which were thumping 4-0 defeats.
Since then, Adie Jones’ side have suffered just one defeat in four - at Cymru Alliance leaders Cefn Druids - and Ruthin have hit a purple patch at home as they’re currently undefeated in three at Memorial Park Fields.
This home run contains an excellent victory at home to title chasing Caersws.
Ruthin will have to be at their best to threaten a Rhyl side that hasn’t been beaten in the last two months.
The loss at Penrhyncoch back on November 16 is Rhyl’s only league defeat of the season and they occupy third place in the standings, just a point behind frontrunners Cefn Druids.
“We are not bad and we seem to have settled on a method of play that suits us,” said Griffiths.
“We are just trying to work on a few things.
“They (Rhyl) are a really good strong side and we are looking forward to it. You could say it’s the big Vale of Clwyd derby.”
Griffiths added: “Ruthin are a big club. We are trying to get grants and stuff and we could probably turn out, across all age groups, 15 teams every week.
“There’s not many clubs in Wales you could say that about.”
Ultimately, it all rests on an improvement in the weather if the match is to go ahead.
The pitch was under a couple of inches of snow on Tuesday, but with warmer weather anticipated for the end of the week, Ruthin are hopeful.
“If it starts thawing on Thursday ... we might have a good chance (of the game going ahead),” said Griffiths.