The first will see flanker Danny Thomas set a new club record for league appearances against the Grove Park side.
Thomas will be playing his 177th league game for Albion, which will break Richard Thompson’s long-standing record of 176 games.
Barnstaple-born Thomas first joined Albion in the summer of 2000 and made his debut in the club’s opening game of the season against Penzance-Newlyn at Beacon Park. Albion won that National League Division Three South game 19-0 and went on to win all their league fixtures that season to secure the title and claim promotion to Division Two.
Thomas captained the side to promotion the following season and later became the first Albion player to lead a team out in a cup final at Twickenham.
Yet it looked like he had missed out on breaking the league appearance record in 2007 when he announced he was leaving Albion and calling time on his National League playing career to take up a coaching role at Taunton.
Thomas had been troubled by a neck injury and was keen to moving into the coaching side of rugby.
But this summer he decided to return to Brickfields. He has returned primarily as a coach, but did say he would play if needed – which has been the case at the start of this season due to injuries to Kyle Marriott, Jake Childs and the late arrival of Sean-Michael Stephen.
Although setting a new club record is nice for Thomas, it is sad to see a loyal Albion man Thompson lose a record.
Born-and-bred Plymothian Thompson served Albion for over a decade, experiencing both highs and some very low lows. He first made his debut as a teenager, alongside his older brother, Martin.
And Thompson, who played alongside Thomas in Albion’s two promotion winning teams, would surely not be losing his record tomorrow had National League rugby played as many games a season as it does now.
It was a similar story when Dan Ward-Smith broke Steve Walklin’s club record for career league tries. For a large spell of Walklin’s Albion career, clubs only played around 12 league fixtures a season, whereas now there are 30 games on the calendar.
The other milestone that will be celebrated tomorrow against Manchester is the fifth anniversary of the opening of Brickfields.
Albion’s first game there, which was against Otley, came exactly five years to the day.
The club only decided a few months earlier to definitely move from Beacon Park, which had been their home for over 80 years. And a couple of weeks before they were due to face Otley Brickfields still looked just like an open field.
But, incredibly, in the space of two weeks a 5,000-plus stadium with nearly 1,000 seats and over 2,500 covered areas, was created.
Certain items from Beacon Park were transferred down the road, including the well-loved manual scoreboard and the contents of the ‘blue room’.
On the big day Albion had the Royal Marines helicopter the match ball in, they had dancing girls and a band, but, unfortunately, it went wrong on the field with them losing 16-10 having been 10-0 up at half-time.
Albion also lost their next match there – a 24-15 defeat to Bedford.
People started believing the old Raglan’s Barracks site was haunted and that there was a hoodoo on the pitch.
So drastic action was called for – and it came in the form of Italian prop Tino Paoletti.
Another Italian had mentioned to the club that throwing salt onto the pitch would bring good luck. They were assured it was an Italian custom.
So the Albion players decided to have Italian international Paoletti perform the ritual on the pitch (who said sports people were superstitious!).
Anyway, it certainly did the trick as Albion hammered Redruth 64-14 in the Powergen Cup in their next match at Brickfields.
And their first league win came in their next home fixture when tomorrow’s opponents Manchester visited. Albion won that game 54-14 and ran in nine tries.
After that Brickfields became something of a fortress.
Albion’s impressive home record slipped last season. Many people in rugby believe that Albion have made Brickfields too nice to visit. When Albion first went there none of their opponents liked the old stone dressing rooms, which had hit-and-miss showers.
Brickfields has certainly changed incredibly in the last five years.
It is now the biggest rugby union-only ground in National Division One with a capacity of 8,400, which includes 3,500 seats and covered areas for over 2,000 people.
Premiership-standard floodlights have been added, as has an electronic scoreboard (although the club have also kept their manual one from Beacon Park) and grandstands on three sides.
The club have plans to develop it even further, including four extra sections to be added to the current 1,000-plus East Stand.
Albion, like Exeter, were told a couple of years ago that to have any chance of gaining promotion to the Premiership they had to have their own ground, which could hold over 10,000 people.
Those two clubs have invested heavily in their grounds on that basis, which is why it would not be fair to change the rules now on promotion criteria.
People will say that if a club wins the league then they should be promoted, whatever, but after Albion and Exeter were told a few years back that they needed top-quality facilities they had done that at considerable financial cost.
Both Brickfields and Sandy Park are a credit to South West rugby and deserve to host top quality rugby games, but, honestly, hands up how many people miss the atmosphere and the mud bath games at Beacon Park and the County Ground?
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