The chances of Andover escaping a swift return to London Three South-West seem to be becoming more remote by the week as they went down in their must-win game against fellow strugglers Old Mid-Whitgiftian.

This latest defeat, their seventh in eight starts, comes as a further blow to their survival chances as sidelined coach Keith Mitchell commented: "We need to get the spade back out rather than the great big JCB we are using to dig the hole for ourselves right now!"

But he is bemused as he cannot pinpoint exactly where things are going wrong, especially after they had a few good chances. Craig Patterson and an opportunist score from Dave Sussex, who just won the race to the touchdown after blocking an attempted clearance kick, gave Andover their points.

Mitchell had no excuses. "There is nothing more I can do to be honest. We just ran out of ideas, but we have got a huge injury list which is not helped by when one player comes back and another gets injured as happened today," meaning Alex McNair's awaited return being cancelled out by Jim Wallace picking up another injury.

With the next four matches being against Gosport & Fareham twice, fourth-placed Cobham and former leaders Worthing, they have their work cut out but the coach hopes they can take something from those games before meeting Old Mid-Whitgiftians again just before Christmas.

The chances of them getting anything at Gosport are decidedly rare, especially after they returned from Cobham with both points with an excellent performance in winning 25-18.

Inspirational scrum-half Jamie Daly with two, followed by Chris Thompson getting on the scoring list in his first game back from Navy recruitment duty, and Gary Middleton crossed for the peninsular men as they made sure their hosts kept their distance in the promotion race.

Portsmouth gave themselves a chance of rejoining the charge by returning to form with an excellent 27-21 triumph over Wimbledon in a showing which pleased coach Ian Chandler no end.

They roared into a 14-0 lead in the space of 15 minutes through the returning Matthew Gronow and Anthony Russell before the visitors, buoyed by their watching former coach Tim Herman, now the forwards coach at Rugby Camp, replied in similar fashion.

A penalty from Neil Styles before the break gave the home side the impetus before Gronow completed his hat-trick with two tries after half-time. "We asked a lot of the boys to come back from the recent performances and they have done us proud," said Chandler.

"It was a much-needed win which takes us back to sixth," he added, after hailing hooker Dave Needham for his outstanding performance after receiving some harsh criticism for his efforts against Bognor the week before.

Winchester's London Division One match fell victim to a waterlogged pitch at Hayward's Heath.