After looking like promotion certainties until a collapse in the final few weeks of last season, Gosport & Fareham have started this campaign in the worst possible way, with four defeats in their five games to date.
While playing all their early season matches away from home while a new clubhouse is built at Gosport Park may give this an unreal look, their defeat at unbeaten Barnes has set some alarm bells ringing.
And this result will not help as they struggle to get a regular team keen to maintain this travelling regime until early December as a mix of youngsters and veterans attempt to keep their heads above water.
They are currently fourth from bottom with one win.
Just flanker Brett Gamblin's try kept them on the scoreboard but captain Jamie Daly admitted the home side were: "Not that good, but neither were we. They are top of the league, but are not good enough to stay there."
"We are very disappointed. The commitment was not there and it showed, but we should have put up more of a fight. But, there are problems with travelling away every week."
Winchester and Andover are just below them with similar records but if the former thought their result against Barnes the previous week was a good omen, a rampant Richmond brought them down to earth with a serious bump - thrashing them 75-5 at Nuns Road.
Andover are also struggling at the wrong end of the table, going down 27-15 to Tunbridge Wells while Portsmouth let Beckenham hack a great chance of going second from their grasp, resigning them to mid-table instead.
"We threw it away," said coach Ian Chandler after seeing the Kent side score in the final few minutes following a wayward long pass had gone loose. "We took a few wrong options and had the chance to win the game, but didn't," Chandler added.
Havant, though, bounced back with a victory but had to sweat late on before finishing off Old Albanians 30-24 in London Division One to an audible sigh of relief from the home support.
With injuries and unavailability problems aplenty, the hosts would have been happy to lead 30-17 with 20 minutes remaining but they dropped off and almost came unstuck as the Hertfordshire men came strong in the final quarter.
Three tries in the space of ten second-half minutes pulled the blue and whites away. "Poor defensive tackling and a tendency to make simple unforced errors let us down," said a club spokesman.
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