MAY PEN, Clarendon — Humble Lion coach Linval ‘Pala’ Wilson said his team’s approach in this evening’s crucial Red Stripe Premier League game against Tivoli Gardens will mirror a street brawl — a fight to the end.

The central Clarendon-based Humble Lion are delicately seated one point above the relegation zone with three games remaining in the preliminary stage of the competition.

They entertain the all-but-safe Tivoli, six points clear, at the Effortville Community in a 6:00 pm kick-off. And Wilson and his troops are well aware that anything less than a win could drag them back into the bottom two.

“To me, it’s even more than a final,” he said. “This one will make or break us because it’s a dogfight down there. We are fighting for our lives.”

“Winning this game,” he added, “would be a major boost because next we have Boys’ Town and Portmore (United), who are (both) in the same situation as us. So taking three points from Tivoli is a must.”

Taking the mind seven months back, it was virtually impossible to separate Humble Lion and Montego Bay United as both sides sat comfortably at the top of the 12-team league in the early stages of the season. But with just two weeks of competition left after today’s fixtures, 14 points and six places now stand between the clubs.

Asked for possible reasons as to why Humble Lion’s title challenge — unlike that of the semi-final-bound MoBay — has petered out into a relegation scrap, Wilson was unable to give an answer.

“Well, I couldn’t really speak to that because I wasn’t here at the time,” noted Wilson, a former national defender. “But our job now is to fix that so that we can stay in the Premier League.”

And he is confident that Humble Lion, for a fourth time in five years, will avoid the drop.

“I think the focus is there,” he said. “The players understand what is going on and I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t survive because we have been there before, plus this team tends to perform better when their back is against the wall.”