After a six-year hiatus, a pair of local rivals will finally meet again on Thursday.

The Morgan Academy Senators (1-0) will host the Meadowview Christian School Trojans (0-1) Thursday at 7 p.m. for the first time since 2005.

Lebo Jones, head football coach of Meadowview Christian School, said he’s glad to see the rivalry return and he’s ready for his team to take the field.

“I think it’s a good thing. Being so close together, we need to be playing and getting the rivalry back,” Jones said. “I played at Morgan and was on two state championship teams there. I’ll always remember those good years I had there, but I’m at Meadowview now and I’m going to do the best job I can while I’m here.”

While the game will serve to excite fans who share some familiarity, Morgan head football coach Bob Taylor said the Senators are approaching the game just as they would any other.

“We’re treating it just like a regular game. It’s a short game week, so we’re getting ready for Thursday and we’ve got to compact everything into one or two days and be ready to go,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to continue to do what we do. We’re just trying to treat it like another ballgame because that’s what it is.”

Jones said the Trojans have been working on correcting their mistakes and not turning over the football, as they’ll be facing a good Senators team.

“They’ve got a real good team. They’re not real big, but just looking at the film, they seem real quick and they execute their offense real well,” Jones said. “I think that coach Taylor does a real good job offensively.”

Taylor said the Trojans have a strong weapon in running back Dylan Lawrence and he’s impressed with their play in the trenches.

“Dylan Lawrence, he’s a very good football player. Their offensive and defensive lines do a good job coming off the ball. Their quarterback throws the ball pretty well,” Taylor said. “Meadowview, you take away a couple of turnovers the other night and they’re in the ball game. And that’s the name of any ballgame. We’ve just got to be able to contain the rest of their running game. Defensively, they do a good job of trying to execute what they do. We’ve just got to do what we’re supposed to do.”

Jones said keeping his two playmakers involved will be key, as Lawrence had 123 yards on the ground including one rushing touchdown and one receiving touchdown last week, and Trojans’ quarterback Seth Taylor threw two touchdowns in last week’s game.

“We’ve got to get the ball to our playmakers and, of course, those two guys are probably our biggest two playmakers,” Jones said. “We just want to keep the other team guessing, but at the same time they pretty much know who our playmakers are. They’re going to be getting the ball a lot, so we’ve just got to execute and do the best we can.”

While the Senators were able to rack up 400 yards of total offense in last week’s win — the majority of which was on the ground — Taylor said there are still mistakes to correct.

“We’ve got to execute and we’ve got to stay focused on what our game plan is,” Taylor said. “We’ve got to continue to work on correcting our little things that we did wrong. We had a great game the other night stat wise, but there are little things that we saw on film that we need to correct and we’re trying to correct this week. We’ve got to minimize those and hold onto the football.”

Jones also emphasized mistake-free football as the way to victory for his team.

“We’re going to have to not make any mistakes or at least keep our mistakes down to a minimum,” Jones said. “We need to force some turnovers on defense, make them fumble, intercept some passes and we need to have a big play here and there. Basically, we’re a ball-control offense and we’re going to try to keep their offense off the field as long as we can.”