Balham are currently 3 points ahead of Thatcham, but while the Kingfishers will have six games remaining after Saturday’s fixture, Balham will only have three.

Balham are certain to finish above Guildford City. Although it won’t yet make them mathematically safe, they will probably be looking for one more win to give them a healthy cushion above Eversley & California and Camberley Town. After today, Balham’s remaining fixtures are Redhill (H), Badshot Lea (H) and Sheerwater (A).

After struggling for much of the season, Balham propelled themselves up the table with five wins in seven games from late January. During that spell forwards James Anderson and Yonas Emhatsion have scored six goals each.

Thatcham’s climb up the table has been pedestrian by comparison, though Town’s games have been fewer and further between. Charlie Knight has struck the winner in the last three home games to give Thatcham a huge boost, with those winners coming deep into injury time against Epsom & Ewell (2-1) and Corinthian-Casuals (1-0).

The Kingfishers will be looking to avenge three defeats at the hands of The Blazers within a month, earlier this season. Balham won 1-0 in the League Cup, 3-2 in the FA Vase, then 3-1 in the League with Piers Oldland scoring in each of the latter two wins.

Ahead of the game Town manager Cameron Philbey said,

"We face two challenging fixtures in four days, but quite simply, they are opportunities to win games of football. Balham still need the points to be safe, and we know they’re a tricky side from our encounters earlier this season - they also caused problems for our neighbours Tadley last weekend.

Our principal mission remains to pick up the points we need to stay in this league. From the outside, people might look at it and think we’ve had a really poor season, but I’m not letting the players forget how difficult a task this has been, and how close we are to achieving our goal.

This is a close group of players who believe in each other and I think that shows through in the late goals we have scored recently. Charlie coming in has been really positive for us, and we need to work on creating more chances for him.

Once again, unfortunately we won’t quite be at full strength on Saturday. It is really frustrating as I’m sure we’d be competitive in this league if we had our best team available week-in-week-out. But we will work with what we’ve got, and that may mean some players being flexible. We have had success playing Curtis in a winger role, while Levi added fresh athleticism and fight in the middle last week."