IMPORTANT WEEK — John McCune and his Madonna football team have a big game in the playoff race when they head to Beallsville on Friday night. - Michael D. McElwain

BEALLSVILLE — The way first-year Madonna head coach John McCune sees it, there’s no two-ways about it – Friday’s game at Beallsville is a “must win” for the Blue Dons.

After dropping back-to-back contests to Catholic Central and Cameron, two teams having great seasons, Madonna is now 4-2 and has dropped to No. 12 in the Class A rankings.

A win this week over the 1-6 Blue Devils can go a long way in making or breaking the Dons chances of staying inside the top-16 and getting a first playoff appearance in four years.

“This is a must-win game for us,” McCune said. “They’re a team that’s more comparable in size in terms of how many kids they have on the football team and this is a game that we feel like we need to win. I think the kids see that.

“We look at the standings and this is one we have to have, especially with the games we have coming up. We have to take care of business this week if we want to have a chance of playing in November. We’re still 12th in the state, we’re still in position to achieve that goal but we can also fall out if we don’t do what we need to do so this is a very important game.”

In order to do that, Madonna will have to be better in the ground game on both sides of the ball after both the Crusaders and Dragons were able to effectively run the ball against them and stop Madonna from doing so.

“We’ve got to establish some kind of running game and be able to stop the run on defense,” McCune said. “The last two weeks the teams we’ve played have been able to do whatever they wanted on the ground, I think we’ve given up 300 yards rushing in both of those games. And, we weren’t able to establish any kind of running game of our own.

“This week we have been solely focused on getting the run game going and stopping the run. We’re going to try to run the football Friday.”

The Blue Devils lone win came at Hundred a few weeks ago. Their losses are to Bishop Rosecrans, Newcomerstown, Frontier, Belpre, Valley and Bridgeport. They are 23rd in the Division VII, Region 27 standings in Ohio.

“What I notice about them is their size up front,” McCune said of Beallsville. “They don’t have a bunch of speed, but they’re big and that’s kind of been what has hurt us is the size of other team’s lines, so that is definitely a concern. We’re going to change a couple things and try to do a better job against the run, hopefully that makes the difference this week.”

The nearly two-hour trip, McCune thinks, will give his team a chance to regroup and re-focus.

“I like going on the road, it lets us go into a different environment and allows us to bond a little bit,” McCune said. “The seniors have taken the last two weeks hard, so I think it’s going to benefit us to get out of town for a couple games and just get back to business. We’re going an hour and 40 minutes out into the hills of Ohio and playing on grass for the first time this year, which we practice on grass so we’re excited about that, too.

“It can be good to get away from home when you’re struggling. We’re going to get out of school, go eat together and travel together to try and win a big game and get back to what it felt like the first four weeks.”

After this week, the Dons have two more away from home as they travel to Federal Hocking and Conotton Valley before hosting Oak Glen in the finale.