2000s Overview

Extract from Club History Article

The biggest event in the Club’s history happened on our 50th anniversary with the move from Hove Park to Hove Recreation Ground to allow the whole club to operate on just one site rather than having teams dispersed over 2 or 3 locations.

Richard Beecham originally designed the new building and negotiated with the combined Council officers resulting in the prospect of a new Clubhouse surrounded by four pitches and a training ground. But Richard and the rest of the commitee couldn’t agree on the mechanics of the build and so Jamie Angus took a sabbatical from his role as Club Secretary (Andy Ward took over) and managed the entire project of the build and the move.

Richard left the Club and Peter Allen took over as Chairman as we moved to the new facility.

Our thanks are also due to Sport England for Lottery funding and to The Council for sports and Arts as well as to those members of the club who have made a contribution in one form or another.

We started using the new pitches in 2001 using the old Council changing rooms whilst the new facility was built and then there was an Opening Day ceremony on 24th August 2002 (my 47th birthday!).

Acknowledgement

Once again, my thanks to the estate of Graham Gordon for the handbooks and ephemera. Others have also kindly provided items for this decade.

Teams

	2000-2001	2001-2002	2002-2003	2003-2004	2004-2005	2005-2006	2006-2007	2007-2008	2008-2009	2009-2010
League	L4SE	L4SE	L4SE	Sussex 1	L4SE	L4SE	L4SE	L4SE	L3SE	L2SE
Level	8	8	8	9	8	8	8	8	7	7
Final Position	7	5	7	1	5	4	4	2	3	2
Fate	Remain	Remain	Relegated	Promoted	Remain	Remain	Remain	Promoted	Renamed	Promoted

At the end of the 1990s, we were in LSE3 at Level 8. The RFU renamed and restructured things and we ended up in LSE4 but remained at Level 8.

We stayed at Level 8 until the end of 2002-2003 where, despite us finishing 7th out of 10, we were relegated because of the RFU cascade. I think it was that Bristol got relegated from Level 1 and we took the hit for that.

We were in Level 9 for just that one season and won the league winning promotion to L4SE once more. We got promoted to L3SE by finishing second in L4SE in 2007-2008 and we finished 3rd in that new league at the end of 2008-2009.

The RFU interfered again and by the start of 2009-2010 we were in L2SE – but still at Level 8.

Our final act of the decade was to finish 2nd in that league and win the play off to get promoted to L1S at Level 6. We start in that league in the next decade.

2000’s Alumni

Information to follow.

Governance

Information to follow.

Points

Please note that throughout the 2000s the points awarded for a try remained at 5 points. The points awarded for a conversion remained at 2 points and the points awarded for both a penalty goal and a drop goal remained at 3 points.