BARNSLEY RUFC will reach the halfway point of their season when they return from three weeks off with a home game against Hornsea on Saturday.
The Shaw Laners are currently nine points clear of the bottom two in Yorkshire League Three, sitting seventh out of 12 after ten of the 22 games.
They are due to host second-bottom Hornsea.
Coach Tom Kittrick said: “They came up last year and they are bit of an unexpected package.
“I feel sorry for them having to travel that far on January 3.
“We will see what comes.
“It’s a home game and we’ve only been beaten once at Shaw Lane this season and we’ve played two of the top four.
“We think we can beat anyone in this league at home.”
Barnsley have enjoyed a far better first half of the season than in the last two campaigns in which they went on long losing runs before just staying up.
Kittrick said: “We are more than happy. Compared to last season, when we got 28 points in total, 22 now is a massive improvement.
“That is credit to the players.
“We’ve only added one or two but it shows how the squad has developed.
“We want to be finishing in mid-table.
“That was the aim at the start of the season. It will maybe take 50-55 points to achieve that.
“We have three home games out of the first four games of the year.
“We have to keep making it hard for teams to come to Shaw Lane and keep picking up wins at home.
“We will take it a game at a time and see where we end up.”
Barnsley want to return to Yorkshire Division Two but know it may take time.
Kittrick said: “We know it’s maybe a year and a half too early to get out of this league. We need to keep developing our players.
“We are looking at mid-table this year, top four the year after then the following year is when we want to compete for promotion. When I came in two years ago, the team was struggling to get 15 players out. Now we have 38 registered, we always take 20 to games.
“It’s taking the next step and not rushing it. There are good people at the club who want it to thrive.
“The club has done a lot of work away from the pitch. We have started a Barnsley Schools under 16s teams and the aim is to make that into a Colts team.
“They would then feed into a second team which we’re hoping to set up soon.
“We are doing work with year seven and eights and we want to re-start our junior system. We want to have players coming through.”
Bottom club Dearne Valley are due to visit West Park Leeds.
Wath will look to continue their promotion push in Yorkshire Division One when they visit winless bottom club Leodiensians.
