It’s the last day of the 2025/26 season today and the Clapton CFC Men’s First Team play FC Romania. Here’s what is at stake…

In the Eastern Counties League Division One South, the champions are automatically promoted and the next four teams go into the play-offs for one additional promotion place.

CCFC have a very slim chance of finishing top and are now guaranteed to finish at least second, which means a home play-off semi-final assuming we don’t finish top.

Automatic promotion

Current pos	Club	Played	Points	Pts per game	Poss points
1	Hutton	39	90	2.31	93
2	Clapton CFC	39	87	2.23	90

As you can see from the table above, CCFC are one of two teams who can still finish top.

Leaders Hutton need only a point from their last game against Brimsdown to finish above CCFC. In fact, they can lose and will be promoted, unless we also win and there’s a nine-goal swing in goal difference. So if it’s 4-0 and 5-0, for instance.

The only glimmer of hope is that Hutton’s opponents Brimsdown need a win to reach the play-offs themselves – nothing else will do. However, our opponents FC Romania need a win in the relegation battle so both sides have a tough game.

We’ve crunched the numbers and the chance of this happening is less than 1%. So realistically it is not going to happen, however it’s still a great achievement to take the chase for the title to the final day.

Play-offs

Current pos	Club	Played	Points	Pts per game	Poss points
1	Hutton	39	90	2.31	93
2	Clapton CFC	39	87	2.23	90
3	Coggeshall Town	39	82	2.10	85
4	Rayleigh Town	39	73	1.87	76
5	Newbury Forest	40	70	1.75	70
6	Brimsdown	39	69	1.77	72
7	Lymore Gardens	39	68	1.74	71

There are 7 clubs still with a chance of reaching the play-offs, as seen in the table above.

Clapton CFC are now guaranteed to finish second which means not just that the play-offs are confirmed assuming we miss out on top spot, but a home game in the play-off semis. We would also host the play-off final if we won the semi.

The play-off semi-finals are due to take place on Saturday, April 25 and the final on Saturday, May 2 They are one-legged ties held at the home of the highest placed team.

The second highest finishers play fifth, and third takes on fourth, then the winners of those two games play each other in the final. So we would play either Newbury Forest, Brimsdown or Lymore Gardens, depending on today’s result.

Where to next?

The champions and the play-off winners will be allocated by the FA into the most appropriate geographical division.

For CCFC, that would most likely be the Essex Senior League, where local teams like Ilford, West Essex, Soul Tower Hamlets, Barking, Woodford Town, Romford, Sporting Bengal United and Athletic Newham play.

But boundaries are always subject to change depending on who goes up and down, and it’s possible we’d be in the Spartan South Midlands, where you’d find the likes of Cockfosters, Harlow Town and Haringey Borough. We’ve also been laterally moved to south of the river before, of course…

Unlike our promotion from Step 7 to 6, the ground grading for the next level up would need to be attained by the end of March 2027 – that is after promotion.

It should be an exciting end to the season with everything to play for.