Having captained the Lisbon football ship for parts of four different decades, winning three state championships, Dick Mynahan has mastered the art of managing expectations.

Well, more precisely, he may be the Campbell Conference equivalent of Lou Holtz, who had a knack for making his 1988 Notre Dame juggernaut sound like the underdog against Rutgers or Navy.

You won’t hear Mynahan pick his team No. 1 in Class D South during any preseason, so it’s no surprise that he describes Friday’s marquee matchup at Winthrop/Monmouth as something akin to David vs. Goliath or Douglas vs. Tyson.

“People might say who wants to go to Winthrop on a Friday night, but it’s probably our best chance to compete with them,” Mynahan said. “Where we don’t have a lot of kids with experience, Thompson Field on a hot Saturday afternoon wearing black is probably not what we want.”

Winthrop/Monmouth welcomes Lisbon to Maxwell Field for a 7 p.m. start.

The Greyhounds held off the Ramblers’ rally to win, 28-24, at Lisbon a year ago. It was the first of six consecutive Lisbon wins and four successive Winthrop/Monmouth defeats to start the season.

Both teams went on to make the playoffs, with Lisbon losing 7-6 to Oak Hill in a regional final that could have gone either way. The Greyhounds had 10 seniors on the field that day, though, while the Ramblers made their second-half run to a quarterfinal berth with underclassmen doing the heavy lifting.

“That sophomore-junior group played quite a bit last year,” Winthrop/Monmouth coach Dave St. Hilaire said. “The seniors have shown improvement with focus. There’s a lot of good leader types, just positive attitudes.”

Lisbon’s depth may be a question, especially on the offensive line, but the Greyhounds are coming off an explosive summer 7-on-7 season in which that is less of a factor.

Junior Tyler Halls completed the successful transition from split end to quarterback. He can turn to small, shifty Shawn Grover or big, bruising Noah Francis in the backfield. Tanton Mattson, also a junior, is the lone lineman with significant varsity experience.

“This year we’ve got a few big kids, and the big kids really can’t play a lot, so we’re going to have kids in and out,” Mynahan said. “Of course some kids are there for the whole game, as usual.”

Winthrop returns all but one of its starting linemen, a unit led by senior center Brendon Dunn. Junior Matt Ingram takes the snaps from Dunn for his second year as a starter in the Wing-T, an offense the Ramblers spent a great deal of extra time perfecting in the offseason.

That built upon the success the Ramblers found with running backs Dustin Tripp and Alec Brown, each of whom averaged more than five yards per carry, and flanker Bennett Brooks, who caught seven touchdowns.

“I think we ran for 172 yards or more in the last five games,” St. Hilaire said. “In the playoff game against Old Orchard Beach we ran for over 200 and threw for over 200. We just couldn’t stop power football.”

The Ramblers also left an impression on the Greyhounds, nearly coming all the way back from a daunting first-half deficit. Mynahan recalls that game as a sign of what Lisbon is up against in the latest renewal of this rivalry.

“Last year we managed to go a whole season with 14, 15 kids. This year we’re going to change everything, because we can’t compete the way we’ve been doing it,” Mynahan said. “Winthrop, so many players. Oak Hill, so many players. We saw it last year in the first game when we got 275 yards in the first half and they beat us badly in the second half.”