Here’s the difficulty with rating the Super Premier Division title race as anything other than a two-horse race going into the second half of the season … defences.

There’s a widely accepted truism that says successful teams are built from the back and this is undoubtedly borne out if one reflects back over the first half of the McBookie.com West of Scotland League season, albeit Pollok are the only club to have reached the halfway point in respect of games played.

A total of 165 goals have been scored in 104 games and it goes without saying that many more efforts will be bulging the nets before April/May time next year, however the key question is whether this will be attributable to various attacking strengths or to the glaring defensive weaknesses that have cruelly undermined the vast majority of the West Region’s top twelve clubs up to now.

And this glaring failure to strike the right blend between scoring at one end of the pitch and keeping things tight as a drum at the other is never better illustrated than by glancing at the Super Premier table which has Auchinleck Talbot and Rob Roy as two of only four teams with goals against columns still in single figures.

It’s no coincidence they are currently joint frontrunners in the standings (Talbot are to the fore by virtue of scoring three more goals) and neither can one totally discount the championship aspirations of Hurlford United and Kilbirnie Ladeside though their early form has been erratic.

Darren Henderson’s well-schooled Ford finished runners-up to Auchinleck last time out but have already lost more league games than in their entire 2014/15 campaign and a major cause could be the somewhat enforced reshuffling of his backline which has rushed the blooding of newcomers Scott Davidson, James Creaney and Richie McKillen.

They are all quality signings, however one cannot help but think time is not on the side of the Blair Park outfit if they are to make up ground on the leading pair while awaiting their rejigged backline to settle into their new surroundings on top of commanding stopper Chris Robertson recovering from ankle ligament damage.

And mounting a title challenge could also prove beyond Ladeside’s ambitious gaffer Stevie Swift who gave himself an even bigger headache when addressing the leaking of goals that led to the Blasties only avoiding relegation last season.

His summer months acquisition of an entire new rearguard built around central defenders Mark Staunton , Michael O’Brien and Ciaron Docherty has contributed to Kilbirnie (from only six games played) conceding four goals, fewer than any other top-flight side, and made them difficult to beat but hard not to conclude there’s evidence of a marked imbalance in their netting a meagre seven goals up to now.

Having their main rivals looking far from the finished article defensively has allowed Auchinleck and Rob Roy to steal a march on them by fielding more settled line-ups though the Ayrshire side suffered a massive blow when a knee injury forced ball winning stopper Mark Campbell to call it time on his long and illustrious playing career.

Installing midfielder Steven White in Sparky’s stead was thought to be nothing more than an interim measure yet manager Tommy Sloan hinted at a more permanent switch for the combative battler in saying: “Whitey will come into his own once it dawns on him just how good he is in the position.”

Talbot’s hopes of being crowned Super Premier kingpins is coming under threat from the unlikely source of a Rob Roy side that was openly tipped as a relegation candidate after only gaining promotion via a play-off victory over Shotts Bon Accord.

But gaffer Stewart Maxwell’s inspired move to lure stopper Danny Boyle from Cumbernauld United acted to sort their perceived defensive frailties even though the unassuming centre-back was of the mind deflect away praise and point to the contributions of those around him in the Rabs back four.

He insisted: “Paul Finnigan, Danny McKenzie, Davie Barr and Jonathan Carter were all good players before I came here so a lot of the credit for our lofty league position belongs to them.

“The real hard bit comes now in attempting to stay the course when other teams are gunning for us and for that reason Maxi wants us focused on nothing more than taking one game at a time.

“Auchinleck have shown they possess the consistency and the challenge is to try and match them .”