As I’m writing this match preview, it is less than five hours until kickoff against PP-70, but TamU-K has still not released a lineup for the match. I have heard surprisingly little about the lineup via the various channels I have, and so it remains a mystery as to who all will be available today. The best I have is that Thursday’s training session was well-attended, 19 players was the number I think. That is of course a positive indication.

The name of the game is very clear though. If we get the full three points today, we inch very close to a spot in the promotion playoff match. Indeed, if we win today and NePa does not beat VaKP away at Apia a week later, it will be done. And even if NePa wins that match, we’d have two matches left and probably would need just one point due to our better goal-differential. To put it simply: today we can make the rest of our regular season relatively easy for us, but with a loss we would leave a lot of work to be done in the two matches that remain after today.

Tonight’s opponent PP-70 is still theoretically in relegation danger, but in practice a scenario where that would happen is extremely unlikely. For them this match is probably more about wanting to beat TamU-K than needing points on the table. We are local rivals, and it has been evident over the course of the season that these matches mean more to them than they do for us. The fact that we beat them in the first meeting with a stoppage time goal just adds to this, especially given that we did not play very well in that match and did not really deserve to win.

The match kicks off at 4 pm. It will again be streamed live at tamu-k.com/live, this time without commentary. The club has invited all of its members to the match and offers free sausages and juice boxes to everybody with a membership. Hopefully we will see a lot of our youth players wearing their TamU-K jerseys. That would be a delightful sight indeed.