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Curtain comes down on a promising season

Newhaven 3 Horsham YM 5, SCFL Premier Division match #38, Saturday 25 th April 2026 And so, in what seems like a blink of an eye, the 2025/26 season is confined to the past It doesn’t seem all that long ago that I attended the first pre-season friendly back in the summer; leaving that game as part of a fanbase convinced we were in for a season of real struggle. What a difference nine months makes. While there may have been nothing of great note riding on our final league match of the campaign – a hugely creditable 8 th place finish having already been secured – the fact is that everyone involved in the club can look back on this season with will pride. A young side, many of whom were playing their first full year of senior football, have acquitted themselves superbly, and but for a lack of consistency, we could have made a stronger push for the play-offs that we ultimately ended up doing. In front of a decent-sized crowd on Saturday, Newhaven hosted Horsham YM, a side who...
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Dockers come up just short in seven-goal thriller

Haywards Heath 4 Newhaven 3, SCFL Premier Division match #37, Saturday 18 th April 2026 Newhaven’s penultimate match of the season saw us travel to title-chasing Haywards Heath. While this match may have been something of a dead rubber from our perspective, for the hosts it was anything but. Anything but three points would see Steyning claim the title if they could overcome Peacehaven in a game that was taking place at the same time. However, while there may have not been any real pressure on the young Dockers, this was the ideal opportunity for us to show that we really can compete against the very best teams in the league. It has been our results against the teams in and around the play-off places (a victory away to Horsham YM being the exception) that has ultimately cost us our own shot at the play-offs this season. And all too often these defeats have been damning in how comfortably we’ve been brushed aside. With this game pretty much a free-hit, here was the chance to...
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Newhaven stay alive in battle for sixth

Roffey 1 Newhaven 2, SCFL Premier Division match #36, Saturday 11 th April 2026 Following a disappointing Easter Monday derby day defeat against Peacehaven, the Dockers took to the road on Saturday, looking to bounce back to winning way against Roffey. With the play-offs now out of the picture, Newhaven are battling for what would still be a hugely creditable sixth-placed finish. Even eighth, which is the lowest we can finish, is some achievement, given the complete rebuild that took place at the start of the season, not to mention the youthful age of the squad. Roffey, meanwhile, are firmly ensconced in mid-table, with just one win in their last seven games. Albeit that victory came in their last match against high-flying Horsham YM in their own Easter Monday derby; a result that suggested we’d facing a real battle to snag three more points here. An injury to Ezra Roeg during the warm-up, led to a late call-up on the bench for our latest youth prospect, Jake Buss, fresh from ...
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Late drama brings derby delight

Seaford 1 Newhaven 2, SCFL Premier Division match #34, Friday 3 rd April 2026 The first of two Easter Bank Holiday derby’s took place on Good Friday evening, as the Dockers visited Seaford looking to extend their run of consecutive league victories to three. This was the fourth meeting between the two local rivals this season, with Newhaven twice getting the better of Seaford in cup competitions, but Seaford gaining a measure of revenge by taking all three-points in the reverse league fixture at Fort Road back in November. On that occasion Seaford executed their gameplan to perfection, coming back from a goal down to take a thoroughly deserved three-points against a visibly frustrated Newhaven side. No doubt the Dockers would have been expecting an equally tricky encounter this time around. And that’s exactly what they got. On a very blustery evening which made The Crouch’s already notoriously testing surface even more so, both sides struggled to get a foothold in the game...
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Battling Dockers foiled at semi-final stage

Newhaven 0 Steyning 2, Peter Bentley Cup Semi-final, Tuesday March 31 st 2026 Tuesday night brought with it a trip to Shoreham for our re-arranged Peter Bentley Cup semi-final match against Steyning. A final against Little Common the spoils for the victors. With the Barrowmen currently riding high at the top of the SCFL Premier Division and having already beaten us twice already this season (and one of those a rather hefty tonking that we don’t like to talk about), there could be little doubt that a win here would be one of our biggest results for quite a while. However, entering the match on the back of a previously elusive two-game winning run, we were probably in a better position to be playing this match now than we would have been when it was originally postponed back in February. We certainly started confidently enough, with Ryan Blunt registering the first shot of the match just a couple of minutes in, although it was always rising. As expected, Steyning soon settled and ...
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Consecutive victories at last for dominant Dockers

Newhaven 3 Forest Row 0, SCFL Premier Division match #33, Saturday 28 th March 2026 After a ten-day break, Newhaven began a run of four games in nine days with a home league fixture against Forest Row on Saturday. It was a match that gave the Dockers a chance to finally put to bed the win-a-game/lose-a-game sequence that has plagued them for much of 2026. Having beaten Lingfield last time out, Newhaven would have been confident of gaining three-points against a Row side who we had already beaten twice this season, and who have tasted victory just once in any competition since the turn of the year. However, both teams looked equally nervous in an error-strewn opening ten-minutes in which the ball was repeatedly given away needlessly. Newhaven created the first half-chance of the match, when Ryan Blunt’s inviting low free-kick found Lee Robinson in space, but the striker couldn’t get enough purchase on the ball to guide it goalwards. Seconds later, Row had what would probably ...
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Dockers bounce back to winning ways (again!)

Lingfield 2 Newhaven 5, SCFL Premier Division match #32, Wednesday 18 th March 2026 A midweek trip to Lingfield (well, Whyteleafe) gave Newhaven the opportunity to bounce quickly back from Saturday’s defeat at Pagham. As highlighted in that report, it has been a while since we last won two league games on the trot. The flip-side to that, though, is that it has also been quite a while since we last lost two consecutively. In fact, it hasn’t happened since the end of October when we lost back-to-back games against Steyning and Eastbourne United. While Lingfield may currently be embroiled in a relegation scrap, a recent upturn in form has given them a little breathing space in the dogfight at the foot of the table and led to them being awarded the SNLF Podcast’s team of the month for February. This had all the ingredients of being a tricky Wednesday night encounter. Yet it didn’t turn out that way. Not really. The Dockers made the perfect start to the game, opening the scoring ...
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