Sheffield RUFC and Sheffield Tigers separated by one mile and one place ahead of derby

Their players drink in the same pubs, their children attend the same schools, and their homes are often in the same housing estates.

This season there is another similarity in the Steel City: the clubs occupy fourth and fifth place respectively and are both vying for a top-half finish in National Two North.

On Saturday, they will renew rivalries at Sheffield RUFC’s Abbeydale Park to settle some highly valued bragging rights.

For Simon Tomlinson, the hosts’ director of rugby, the furore surrounding this fixture is a distraction his in-form side are looking to avoid.

“For us, it’s very much just another game and there has to be no difference,”Tomlinson told The Yorkshire Post.

“It’s another league game, it’s halfway through the season, and we can’t put all our efforts into focusing on one game. We’re focusing on Saturday exactly as we would normally.

“Saying that, we’re hopeful (of a win) absolutely. We’ve prepared really well and probably had a slightly better run into the game than the Tigers have in terms of results. We’re playing at home, so we’re quietly confident.”

Sheffield come into the fixture having won five of their last six games, with the anomalous result being a 19-19 draw with Tynedale. For a club who began the season looking to establish themselves as a top-half side in the fourth tier, their ascendancy to fourth place bodes well for fulfilling that aim by the end of the season.

Discussing their recent on-field fortunes, Tomlinson indicated any success depends on a healthy tonic of “consistency”, hard work, and the new high tackles laws.

He added: “It comes down to consistency. I think we’ve had a lot of the same team, we’ve been fortunate with injuries, and I think we just work very hard on the training field to play our style of rugby. We’re very much a team that likes to run the ball, and we like to attack when we’re on the pitch.

“The new laws are also helping us in terms of tackle height. If you look at the league as a whole, the scores are higher than previously because people are keeping the ball alive.

“I do think that’s helping the overall flow of the game to be honest.”

Across at Dore Moor, Tigers director of rugby Jack Howieson is not as buoyant as his local counterpart.

Having flown as high as third until recently, injuries to key players such as Mark Ireland and Tom Calladine mean the visitors are suffering from a bout of mixed results and sit in fifth.

Howieson said: “We probably overachieved a little bit at the start of the year.

“We’ve had a few injuries, which have hampered us a little bit. The players we’ve lost are some of our most experienced players so that’ll have a bit of an effect.

“That probably will be the reason our form has dropped off, I’d say.”

Despite this recent frustration, which included a freak weather-influenced 10-0 home defeat to Tynedale last time out, Howieson is optimistic the typical chaos of a local derby will provide the Tigers with a Christmas present of leapfrogging the hosts.

“Those games are always the best games of the year,” he added.

“They’re always the games people look forward to, so they don’t really need a coach to build them up very much.

“They know how we play, we know how they play, so it all just comes down to the day. It will be a close game. Everyone feels the importance of this one already.”