Football in May is a curious business. At the elite level, manicured pitches and peak conditioning mean it scarcely looks different from September or January. At step 5 of the non-league pyramid, it feels like another sport entirely.
The now-ubiquitous play-off system, stretching down through English football, undoubtedly injects drama while mercifully erasing dead rubbers. I’ve seen it work miracles before. My own club, Welling United, long accustomed to relegation scraps, often produced unlikely late-season runs against mid-table sides already mentally on the beach. As a Sunday footballer, I always felt that any fixtures after Easter carried with them a faint sense of wrongdoing – as though you were trespassing into cricket’s territory.
For Haywards Heath Town, this was not supposed to be how 2025-6 ended. Top of the Southern Combination Football League (SCFL) – formerly the Sussex County League – for much of the campaign, buoyed by ambition and impending ground improvements, dropping into the play-offs in second place felt like an opportunity lost rather than a consolation. A stuttering end to the season meant they arrived at their venerable Hanbury Park home in uncertain form.
Hanbury Park, a proper non-league ground
As I walked to the game, past the cricket players in Clair Park and through a smart council estate, it felt like approaching a proper non-league ground, as opposed to the usual collection of hastily assembled identikit and temporary stands, now common below step 3.
Old-fashioned floodlights loomed in the distance and the tannoy was playing the usual 80’s/90’s mix beloved of lower-level football DJs. A line of fans outside queuing to get in illustrated the importance of the tie, and a festival atmosphere pervaded the occasion with open air bars and families gathering in clusters around the perimeter fencing.
The ground itself has one old-fashioned grandstand that looks much older than its 1950’s construction. This has a curious seating arrangement with the usual plastic seating apart from each corner where open bench seating or standing curves up to the roof.
One end has open standing room, the other has a small covered shed with flats jutting over the pitch, in what surely must be one of the best views of a football ground from a front room in the country. However, on this occasion the residents remained unmoved by the prospect of playoff excitement.
Heath’s opponents, Peacehaven & Telscombe, had finished fifth and travelled from their cliffside base with considerably less expectation and perhaps, crucially, less pressure. Even during the warm-up, watched by a crowd nudging 800, they looked sharper, freer, a side clearly embracing the notion that they had nothing to lose.
Weeks without rain had left the Hanbury Park pitch dry, uneven and unforgiving. The surface ensured the opening exchanges were scrappy, both teams struggling to find rhythm. With both sides in their away kits, there was a faintly surreal, pre-season air to the occasion. Control was elusive; balls skidded off shins, passes sailed over heads, and promising wide positions yielded little more than mis-hit crosses.
The contrast to my previous visits to the stadium, which had seen Heath play a brand of powerful and athletic football, whilst putting their opponents to the sword, often by several goals, was palpable. The fickle nature of form and fitness seemed to have reared its head, stultifying their ability to complete the simplest of passes and paralysing their every move with fear of failure.
In contrast and gradually, Peacehaven began to assert themselves. Elegantly marshalled by the Luka Modrić-esque Cam Wiltshire and powered by the muscular presence of Lewis Beebee up front, ‘the Tye’ started to threaten with increasing regularity. They might have been ahead before half-time, and as the interval approached, an act of self-destruction from the home side shifted the mood decisively.
A reckless challenge, followed by a needless verbal exchange, resulted in a red card for Heath captain Jack Barnes. As the whistle blew for a slightly belated half-time and rain began to fall, an uncomfortable sense of inevitability rippled around the ground.
The second half
The second half, played under relentless rain, offered few clear-cut chances. To their credit, the ten men of Haywards Heath competed gamely, but Peacehaven always carried the greater threat, particularly on the break. As fatigue crept in, the visitors’ numerical advantage began to tell.
The decisive moment arrived in the 77th minute, a goal that felt thoroughly deserved. From there, Peacehaven never looked like surrendering their lead. As they celebrated progress to a play-off final against Guernsey with their travelling support, Haywards Heath trudged off, another season abruptly concluded.
For a club with one of the division’s larger budgets, the sense of a squandered opportunity was unmistakable. The long midweek trips to places like Roffey and Bexhill await once more in 2026–27, and there will be quiet reflection on a late-season collapse that coincided, perhaps fatally, with an extended FA Vase run.
In non-league football, timing, as much as talent, remains everything.
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