A win for Athletic would also mean a shot at the play-offs to step up a grade next season to the Ultra Central Football League a season ahead of schedule.
Meanwhile, Versatile Wanganui City has already claimed the Yorb Horizons Premiership title with two matches remaining. Actually, City has three matches effectively with the catch-up game against Massey Reserves that was postponed when one of its players returned home from Auckland and trained with the squad.
The player was tested for Covid-19, but returned a negative result.
City coach Kelvin Francis said while the title was already in the bag after a 5-nil thrashing of third-placed Palmerston North Boys High School 1st X1 last week, complacency would not be an option when they took on Breakers Red Sox in Ashhurst today.
"We won't take the foot off the pedal now we've won the title," Francis said.
"We'll go hard out and after the competition ends next week we will still play Massey Reserves, hopefully under lights in a midweek fixture so we can give our under-19s a run ahead of the Napier Rovers' Under-19 Tournament in Hawkes Bay over Labour Weekend.
"It's so good to have the title with games to go. Whanganui football is in good shape and we wish the Athletic firsts all the best in New Plymouth on Sunday. We also wish the Athletic Reserves all the best against Tokaro on Saturday.
"Athletic sits second on the table behind us, but only a point behind Palmy Boys so they need a couple of good games to give Whanganui the quinella in the Horizons Premiership."
Francis singled out several of his players that helped clinch the title last week.
"We benched our regular striker Anthony Bell, who is the competition's highest goal scorer and put left back Jack Donaldson up in his place. Jack played exceedingly well, scoring two. Latham Berry scored a goal as did Flynn Hogan and Anthony when we brought him on in the second spell. The whole team performed."
Athletic Reserves manager Gary Johnston last weekend's 1-0 loss to Massey Reserves was a wake-up call and a result that would spur them on to win the final two games of the competition and give Whanganui a quinella.
"Yeah, last week was a timely wake-up call. We can't win the competition, but we can give Whanganui a one/two finish. We can't afford any complacency in our next two games and I don't think that will be a problem. We're all in pretty good spirits," Johnston said.
The Phillips Electrical Whanganui High School A1 netball girls fell at the final hurdle when going down 39-18 to Manukura Black in a repeat of last year's Pioneer New World Manawatū Secondary Schools competition last weekend.
Last year the WHS girls won the title, beating Manukura Black, but with six missing from last season's make-up the younger set could not foot it as well this season.
The Robyn Walford and Kate Ritani-coached team were even nutted on the line by Palmerston North Girls High School A1 for second. PNGHS beat Manukura Red last week by just one point (41-40) to push them into second place in the leaderboard relegating WHS to third.
The Whanganui Men ended their season with an embarrassing 8-nil loss to the unbeaten College team in the Manawatū Premier Men's hockey league.
Whanganui has a shot at a redemption of sorts when it takes on bottom-of-the-table Levin on Saturday.
In other sport, the Trelleborg Whanganui Squash Club's men's E grade squash team is heading to Oamaru next week for the National E grade Superchamps teams event starting on Wednesday.
The team, which won its district event back in July after being seeded 2nd and taking out the Squashgym Palmerston North team 3-2 in the final has been training hard over the last eight weeks under coaches Kent Darlington and Carl Matthews.
The team line-up consist of Maximus Matthews, Aaron Toy, Thor Darlington, Curtis Fatiaki, Mike Strang, Kees Robbertsen and Malachy O'Connor.
Matthews, Darlington and O'Connor are all a product of the club's Junior programme who were starting off in J Grade not so long ago and are now rising up the grades - Matthews and Darlington are now D graders.
The Whanganui E team is seeded second in the seven-team event and in pool play they will play one match on Wednesday, two on Thursday and then it will be the semifinals on Friday and finals on Saturday.
