Losing, Dudley Kingswinford wryly observe, can be habit forming; they lose most weeks. Winning, as Halifax remind everyone in Division Three, also encourages a trend towards inveteracy.

The Yorkshire club have won every National League game they've played this season. That's 16 victories in all and as they only lost once last season, they can claim, statistically, to be the most successful club in England.

Not too many watchers will be expecting them to lose at Dudley on Saturday. The top team versus the second bottom. Is it a contest?

That's a good question to ask down Heathbrook way because if there is anything that is likely to excite the locals, it is the notion that they have no chance.

They have already proved that once. When Dudley lost at Bradford & Bingley by 70 points earlier in the season, they willingly proclaimed that Bradford were the best side they had ever come across in this division. Would the return be a contest?

Not just a contest but perhaps the biggest upset in any league this season. Dudley, against ridiculous odds, won. And they did so not because their rugby scintillated but because they gladly accepted the underdog's role and then gloried in it.

They recognise that the have to do the same thing now. Against a team, the only one in this division, whom they have never beaten.

"It's not beyond the realms of possibility," said director of rugby, Gordon Bannatyne. Rather wistfully, or so it sounded. "But it is going to take an effort of the proportions of the Bradford game."

Having said that, Bannatyne never does criticise his side for lack of effort. "The players give everything and the coaches work hard but it doesn't matter how good your performance is, you have got to get results.

"You have got to put Ws on the board and we don't do that often enough."

And so Dudley arrive at this stark imperative: they have got to win at least five of their remaining eight matches to stay in the English Leagues.

"That's the absolute minimum," said Bannatyne. "And it's one more victory than we have achieved in the whole season so far."

Bannatyne reports the squad have prepared in the knowledge that Halifax's strength is in the certainty of their play and the positive expectation of every result. "They've got a couple of New Zealanders (full-back Zac Luteru and his brother, wingcentre Tekori) and a Samoan No 8 (Rob Afoa-Peterson), but they have no dazzling stars.

"They are not a flashy side, just technically strong, disciplined and very, very clinical." As were Bradford & Bingley, the club optimist might venture.

Stourbridge have not taken from their season much that is appropriate to their aspirations.

They have shown themselves to be unaccountably vulnerable at home and on Saturday face a side of whom that is not usually said. They travel to Wharfedale, who were once way below them in the table but who are now one place above them. A good game to win, as they say.