Mid-Solent League will be ‘flexible’ if they get influx of new clubs ahead of 2020/21 season

The league ran with 11 clubs in 2019/20, which was one more than in the maiden MSL season.

That’s because Rowner Rovers and Cowplain were welcomed into the fold, while Blue Anchor pulled out at the end of 2018/19.

Now the MSL are set to lose champions Harvest Home to the Hampshire Premier League, but will replace them with Segensworth U19s.

The latter played a few friendlies against MSL teams in recent months, though not as many as they’d hoped due to continual bad weather and then the Covid-19 pandemic.

MSL official Rob England revealed the league could also be welcoming some more new clubs.

‘There’s two who have shown an interest, and there’s talk of possibly a Harvest Home reserve side as well,’ he said.

‘We obviously encourage all new clubs - there’s free entry to the league and cups, there’s free registrations.

‘There’s still some money left over from the Portsmouth League days which we use as a development fund.

‘It would cost about £20 to enter the league, £15 for a cup, and the registrations can be £5 each - so it all helps.’

Mob Albion are one of the teams who have shown interest in joining the MSL. They tweeted this week: ‘Very much in our infancy but hoping to be accepted into the @MidSolent for the 2020/21 season.’

Another tweet stated: ‘We have all the paperwork. We are ready to go - as soon as lockdown is lifted we will be busy sorting everything.’

England said ideally there would not be more than 12 teams in the MSL top flight.

At present, if all the talk comes off, they could have 14 clubs in 2020/21 - and therefore could run two divisions of seven clubs.

‘Ideally we’d have two divisions,’ he said.

‘It’s better that way for promotion and relegation - there were a few mis-matches last season.’

There certainly were - Wymering trounced Cowplain 17-5 and 13-1, while Rowner lost 14-1 to Portchester and 15-1 to Carberry.

In addition, Wymering lost 17-1 to FC Strawberry in a cup tie in October just a week after crashing 14-1 to the same opponents in a league match.

England continued: ‘If we had more than 12 teams in a division it could get a bit difficult fitting all the games in if we had bad weather.

‘You’ve got the two internal League Cups and then you’ve got the Hampshire Vase. And this season the Hampshire FA introduced a Plate event for the clubs who got knocked out of the Vase in the first round.

‘If we end up with more than 12 clubs, we’d need to have a debate. We’ll be as flexible as we can, there’s nothing set in stone.

‘We might need to be a bit innovative.’

The miserable wet weather that swept across southern England from late September through to the start of lockdown had left some local clubs facing a huge fixture backlog.

The MSL, with only 20 league fixtures for each side to play, weren’t too badly hit compared to some.

Burrfields only had four games left, with Wymering having the most league games remaining - nine.

‘Around 50 per cent of the clubs play on 3G pitches now,’ said England, ‘so that’s a great help.

’We’ve also got a good bunch of club secretaries who help make the committee’s life a lot easier.

‘Compared to some leagues, we weren’t too badly off (regarding fixtures left to play).’

The MSL remain keen to conclude the 2019/20 Father Purcell and Len Day Cups if at all possible.

The FA have given them the green light to play the remaining semi-finals and finals at the start of next season, whenever that might be.

Harvest Home, though, won’t be allowed to compete as they will be in the HPL by then. The teams they beat are likely to be reinstated instead.

‘If it’s feasible, we’d like to conclude the cups,’ said England.

‘We’ll review it again in June. If we can’t fit them in by the end of September, it probably won’t be feasible to do it.’

Harvest Home, however, should be able to face former MSL rivals FC Strawberry in the final of the Hampshire FA Vase. Again, the caveat is that football restarts at some point in the next few months.