It’s not quite winner takes all, but if Cinderford can manage to fashion a win at Chinnor on Saturday then it would be a brave person who backed against them winning National Two South this season.

That’s easier said than done, of course. A quick glance at the league table tells you all you need to know about the 16-strong division – and quite clearly Chinnor and Cinderford are the two standout teams.

Leaders Cinderford hold a four-point advantage over their nearest rivals, having won 18 of their 19 games, with their only defeat coming at home to Chinnor at the beginning of October when they lost 31-20.

Chinnor, meanwhile, have won 17 from 19 but lost their unbeaten record at the start of the year, when they were surprisingly beaten 35-20 at home by London Irish Wild Geese.

Saturday’s match-up is a massive game whichever way you look at it, with only the champions guaranteed a place in National One next season. The runners-up will play the second-placed team in National Two North for the final promotion spot.

“They don’t come much bigger than this,” admitted Cinderford’s long-serving centre Rob Winchle. “They are certainly a good side and have spent a lot of money. They’ve targeted promotion and they’ve got some very good individuals, but if those individuals don’t perform they can struggle.”

That’s what Winchle and his pals will be hoping for on Saturday, of course, and while the build-up to the game has been pretty hot as you’d expect, the temperature got just that bit hotter in the week.

“Chinnor put out a tweet saying that we’d not beaten them since we came back down to National Two South,” explained Winchle. “They pointed out that we’d played them three times and lost all three, and asked if they were our bogey team.

“It’s certainly ruffled a few feathers at our club, but in the right way.”

Winchle, now 28, has seen it all before of course. He has been with the club since he was 20, learning his rugby at Dursley where he was part of their junior set-up before graduating to their senior teams.

When he first joined Cinderford he was a winger.

“I’ve been getting closer and closer to the scrum since I’ve got older and heavier,” he laughed. “I even had 10 minutes at fly-half against London Irish Wild Geese the other week but I think 12 is as far as I’ll go.

“I do like playing flanker when it’s needed during a game, and me and fly-half Liam Hemming joke that we’ll eventually end up in the back row and then the second row!”

That’s unlikely to happen, of course, and they’d have to be extremely good to get anywhere near the team in those positions anyway because, says Winchle, the Cinderford pack have been in outstanding form.

“They’ve been unbelievable,” he said. “Their scrummaging has been excellent – we haven’t lost a scrum all season – and it’s their all-round attention to detail.

“We’ve got a great coaching team and everyone has bought into the playing structure.”

Winchle, of course, is a big part of that.

“I’ve still got a bit of pace and I’ve got a good set of hands,” he said. “I try to avoid crash ball, I like to rely more on my distribution, a bit like a second 10.”

And it’s those silky skills that Cinderford will need if they get back into National One next season.

“That’s been the target ever since we came down,” said Winchle. “It’s not easy to get out of this division – Hartpury found that – but National One is the level we think we should be playing at. That’s not a bad level for a small coal mining town in the Forest of Dean!”

And if they do get up, how does Winchle think they’ll fare?

“We’ve shown in the past that we can play there and I think we’ll be good enough. Teams like Bishop’s Stortford and Old Albanians have gone up and are comfortable in mid-table. It’s obviously very competitive and there are some very good players in National One.

“There’s a lot more money, especially in the London area, but we’ll obviously have a recruitment drive as well.”

That’s for the future, of course, and more immediately it’s Chinnor on Saturday. Cinderford have so far picked up 18 bonus points this season and Winchle says that another five points are the target when they travel to south Oxfordshire.

If they did pick up all five that would be a remarkable achievement and a real statement of intent, because it would be hard to see Chinnor making up nine points over the remaining 10 games of the season.