WHO is going to go down with Alresford? The question is haunting seven clubs after Trojans and Sandown & Shanklin secured the the top two places with wins.

Alresford's 23-5 defeat to resurgent Nomads means their stay in the division was a fleeting one.

Now the other clubs face a nerve-racking few rounds of matches.

New Milton & District became the latest to sink into the relegation zone after losing a fifth game in their last six since mid-November - the other result being a 20-20 pre-Christmas draw with Millbrook.

They went down 24-10 to previous drop place occupants Farnborough.

The Foresters' crippling injury list grew when Tom Morgan and skipper Matt Rule both dislocated shoulders in another poor performance.

Prop James Mallett and number eight Jamie Ramsey scored the visitors' tries but poor defending allowed the North Hampshiremen climb above them into seventh.

Millbrook sit just ahead of New Milton on points difference, after they gave play-off assured Sandown & Shanklin a tough ride, especially in the forwards before going down 13-0 to two unconverted tries.

However, the visitors were technically down to 14 men as early as the fifteenth minute when hooker Richard Goodridge went down in agony with a recurrence of his knee problem and Wayne Allen broke an ankle in a challenge.

Although coach Jim Brown was forced into action as a late replacement, the visitors lost their balance and rarely threatened the Sandown line while Ross Edmonds and a superb effort from the stretching Iain Lane sealed the points for the Hurricanes.

And one-time promotion candidates Fareham Heathens now need to peer perilously over their shoulders at the teams below them as they have slipped to within a point of trouble following their 21-10 defeat at US Portsmouth.

Services, alongside Nomads, were looking certainties for the drop at Christmas but they now hold fourth and fifth places respectively while Heathens are sixth. Just three points separates Isle of Wight in third from New Milton in ninth.

But the gap could have been more had Isle of Wight beaten leaders Trojans, who got their season back on track and kept hold of top spot with a battling 18-13 victory over the Solent.

In a fierce encounter that saw an Island player dismissed and three players split between the sides sent to the sin-bin, Trojans came back from a 6-0 interval deficit to score twice in quick succession through Joe Newsome and Ian Hudson.

The hosts responded with a converted try of their own but they could not overhaul the Stoneham Lane side late on for the second time this season and coach Ollie Joisce, holding the fort for the flu-stricken Pete Surtees, was delighted with his side.

"We played some really good stuff," he said, "and after the Nomads defeat, we needed to get back to playing the way we know how. And we did that."

Richard Sawle, the Isle of Wight coach admitted: "It was just one of those things and the scoreline of just a try in it could have been either way as we played well."