SUPERMARINE may have suffered heartbreak in their final game at Trowbridge on Saturday but there are still hopes they may get promoted.

Sean Millwaters’ side needed to score four tries and win on Saturday to guarantee the Dorset & Wilts One North title but fell to an 8-7 defeat at Trowbridge.

The narrow defeat, Marine’s third by less a single point this term, meant they ended the day and season in fourth place, having started top. Bradford-on-Avon were crowned champions with Minety runners-up but both may decline to move up into the Southern Counties next season.

Millwaters was positive despite Marine’s fall at the last hurdle and reflected on what has been an almost entirely positive season.

“We’ve got to wait a few weeks now, Bradford and Minety might not want to go up. We’ve had a fantastic season and yeah alright we fell at the last, but I don’t think we did, we played a very good Trowbridge team,” said Millwaters.

“We had the best points total, the best points difference, scored the points and conceded the least.

“We felt we deserved to win it (the league), if we hadn’t had the five points taken off us we would have won this league, we recognised we’ve had a fantastic season.

“We didn’t do anything underhand, we played a colt who we thought was registered as a senior. We were wrong, we have to accept that.”

Marine lost five points when they fielded a colt, Macauley Reynolds, without the the right paperwork. Had they not lost those points Marine would have won the league by a single point.

In the deciding game itself, matters started poorly for Marine, as they found themselves eight points down in the first 10 minutes.

A try from leading scorer Matty Dickens got them back into the game before half-time, with Stuart Dawson adding the extras.

In the second half both side’s defence proved unbreachable and the scores remained the same.

Millwaters knew that his side needed three more scores at half-time if they were to win the league but given the quality of the opposition knew it was not going to be an easy feat.

“It was two teams playing really good rugby. I think we knew at half time we knew it was a massive ask. To be honest I’d rather have played any other team apart from Trowbridge in the last game of the season.”

The outlook for Marine is positive though, Millwaters only took over this season and is ahead of where he wants to be in his terms for the future of the club.

“For me we’re ahead of where I was expecting to be. The way the guys have adapted to the style me and the other coaches are bringing in is good and the new faces have clicked in quickly, I’m really looking forward to pre-season and tweaking a few things and coming back even stronger next year.”