Havant RFC celebrating promotion after eight seasons at London 1 South level

While the FA have caused anger by null and voiding all seasons below National League level, the RFU will promote and relegate teams to ‘maintain the integrity of the competitions.’

That means Havant, who were top of their table when the season was halted due to the Covid-19 pandemic, will end their eight-season stay at London 1 South level as champions.

Next season they will be back in the fifth tier - in London South East Premier.

RFU President Peter Wheeler said: ‘We believe that the decisions made provide fair and balanced outcomes for the game and maintain the integrity of the competitions.

‘We have listened to recommendations from the heart of the game and the approach has been ratified by the RFU Council.

‘This has been a difficult decision to make in the most unprecedented of circumstances. There is no single solution that will suit every club, but the approach taken is one that we believe best reflects the nature of league rugby in England.

‘With 80% of the season complete for the community game, we believe our approach is fair and the right one for our leagues.

‘We have clubs that are clear league leaders and worthy of promotion, but also other clubs who have said they would benefit from relegation, to play more meaningful rugby.’

While the promotion and relegation issues have yet to be made official, Havant are sure to be declared champions as the RFU have said they will base their tables on ‘a best playing record formula.’

Havant ended the season having won 17 out of their 22 league games.

When the campaign was halted, they were two points clear of Westcombe Park with both clubs having four games left.

One of those matches was due to be against each other at Hooks Lane last weekend.

Had Westcombe won it, they could have ended the season as champions instead of Havant.

But Will Knight’s men had already won 38-24 at Westcombe in December, and were confident of another victory on a ground where they won all their league games in 2019/20.

In the final reckoning, Westcombe shouldn’t have too many complaints. Havant scored more points than they did (779-724) and conceded fewer (436-453).

Havant were the division’s highest scorers and they also boasted the second best defensive record after Medway.

‘We are assuming we are the champions,’ said Havant chairman Jon Mangnall. ‘It’s fantastic, and I feel it’s totally deserved.

‘I would hope most of the teams in the division would appreciate that we deserved to be top, and that we would go up with their best wishes.

If you go up you want to go up as champions. I feel deep down we would have achieved that.

‘We had beaten Westcombe Park away and we felt we were in a good position to beat them at home.

‘Our home ground has always been a bit of a fortress for us.’

Mangnall added: ‘It’s great we’re going up but it’s a shame we’ve missed out on the emotion of winning promotion - sport is all about emotion, after all.

‘We had three home games left and we’ve missed out on the build-up to those games, the memories of them.

‘But I’m very proud for the players, for the coaches, for all our supporters, and for the club.

‘We’re very much a community club, a family club.

‘We’re one of the few teams at our level who don’t pay our players or the coaches.

‘The club have paid players in the past and it was the cause of our demise.

‘You’ve got to be able to cover the costs, you can’t just rely on one sponsor. We have seen at other clubs that when that sponsor disappears things can collapse like a pack of cards.’

Havant - the highest-ranked rugby club in Hampshire - were relegated to London 1 South at the end of a miserable 2011/12 season.

They finished rock bottom in National League 3 London & SE, winning just two games out of 26 and conceding a staggering 1,422 points. Their final game was a 111-7 humiliation at Tring.

Recovery has been slow at times for a club which in the early 1990s was on the brink of breaking into the top two tiers of English rugby, but Havant had finished third, third and sixth in the past three seasons. And the green shoots of this year’s title win were fully evident at the end of 2018/19 when Havant won eight of their last nine London 1 South matches.

‘It’s been a long-term preparation, you want to build the strength in depth,’ Mangnall explained.

‘It’s good to be third and fourth, to get close, in order to prepare yourselves (for promotion). If you go up and are under-prepared you could tumble straight back down again.

‘Most of the squad have been together for a few years - the coaches have done a fantastic job in building the infrastructure.

‘It all starts with junior rugby and then helping players make the transition from the academy into the senior teams. A lot of the players have come through from the minis - Richie Janes, Joel Knight, Ross Parkin, Harrison Young, James Wise.

‘Those lads have been playing rugby at Havant since they were six - and the head coach, Will Knight, was exactly the same.’

Though producing home-grown players should always be key to a proper community-based sports club, Havant’s role in Hampshire rugby also allows them to strengthen from outside their immediate vicinity.

‘Being the senior club in the county means we can attract the best players from local clubs,’ said Mangnall. ‘I know sometimes there can be resentment in that, but every player deserves to play at the best level they can.

‘It works both ways - we have lost players to higher clubs. But I want people to achieve as much as they can, and we would never hold our players back.

‘We do attract some players who have moved to this area - Joe Moore is a new one this season, he came from up north to work in the medical profession down here.

‘He’s been a great asset, and (playing for Havant) has given him some roots here as part of a great friendship group.’

As previously mentioned, Havant boasted a 100 per cent home league record in 2019/20 - 10 wins out of 10 on their 3G pitch that was laid in autumn 2018.

It wasn’t all plain sailing, though - they only defeated Camberley (26-25) and Medway (11-10) by the narrowest of margins.

Large crowds played an important role in the perfect Hooks Lane record.

‘When we played Chichester we had 500/600 - for most of the games we had 3300/400,’ Mangnall reported. ‘We had 150 or so sitting down for a meal before games, and the bar was always very busy afterwards. We want to make sure people have a great day out, and it all generates revenue which helps to fund the club.

‘We’ve obviously got the travelling expenses, we’ve started a ladies and a girls section which is going well, and we feed the players both at training nights and on matchdays.

The artificial surface - a ‘wonderful asset’ insists Mangnall - was the result of the RFU’s ‘legacy’ funding in the wake of the 2015 World Cup being held in this country.

Though the governing body fully funded the installation of the pitch, Havant can use it free of charge for 12 hours a week. While other sporting teams and clubs can book the facility, the monies go to the RFU.

‘We can stage games under floodlights now and it’s helped us to improve our training,’ Mangnall added. ‘But we’ve also got three other (grass) outer pitches which need to be kept in a good state - that’s why we need to keep sponsorship money coming in.

‘Those pitches need constant investment. It’s an ongoing task to make sure we have the right facilities for all our players.

‘We have been bucking the trend in that we’ve been growing our rugby population - we’ve introduced the ladies and girls teams and we’ve got around 450 youngsters, that must be one of the biggest in the county.

‘We’ve got excellent social facilities, and a fantastic model for sustainable rugby. We have strong foundations in place.

‘We’ve got great sponsors, and we have a lot of sponsors.

‘We just have to keep working hard, because we don’t know what the impact of the coronavirus is going to be.

‘We’ll just have to prepare as best we can - we’ve furloughed some staff, we’re in the same boat as everyone else.

‘Hopefully we can come out of this in good health.’

While Havant celebrate promotion, numerous grassroots football clubs are unhappy they have been denied a likely promotion due to the FA’s controversial decision.

‘We would have had to accept it,’ said Mangnall when asked how he would have reacted had the RFU come to the same decision as the FA.

‘It would have been very disappointing because of all the hard work that has been put in.

‘I know some clubs would have wanted to be relegated - they were out of their depth and not enjoying it. Sometimes relegation isn’t a bad thing.

‘At our level there’s not really many financial implications in terms of prize money for winning promotion - at our level it’s more about the emotion.’