The permutations for last league game

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Port Hill United, of Napier, lead football's Pacific Premiership by three points. They have completed their league programme.

Second-placed Gisborne Thistle have one game to play . . . against Heavy Equipment Services Gisborne United.

Should Gisborne Vehicle Testing Thistle win that game on Saturday — and the result is anything but assured — they would be equal on points with Port Hill.

Central Football (CF) senior competition regulations say that where two or more teams are tied at the top of the table of any CF competition, goal difference — the difference between goals for and goals against — will be used to separate them.

If the teams are also tied on goal difference, then the team with the most “goals for” shall be declared the winner.

If they are still tied, the head-to-head results between the teams will determine the winner.

If that, too, fails to produce a winner, the title shall be shared.

However, if the winning team were to be promoted or have the opportunity to play off for promotion, then the tied teams would have a playoff match to determine who went forward to the next stage.

Port Hill have scored 39 goals and conceded 14 for a goal difference of 25.

Thistle have scored 35 and conceded 12 for a goal difference of 23.

For Thistle to be sure of overhauling Port Hill, they would need to win by three goals to take their goal difference to 26. They could achieve the same end with a two-goal win if they scored five goals (5-3) . . . the goal differences would be the same (25) but Thistle would have scored one more goal (40) than Port Hill.

If Thistle won 4-2 the goal difference (25) and goals for (39) would be the same, so the head-to-head results would count.

Thistle would lose on that basis. They beat Port Hill 1-0 away but lost 2-0 at home for a 2-1 loss on aggregate.