The father and three sons heading to Twickenham with Havant

For anyone in need of a feel-good story, and that might include a few rugby union fans, Havant’s trip to Twickenham this weekend ticks a lot of boxes.

It is a tale of family and of fraternal bonds. There are themes of resurgence and renewal for a proud Hampshire club who had established themselves in the third tier, almost reaching the second, before sliding down the divisions and, for a short while, copping 80-point defeats on a semi-regular basis.

They will face Driffield, from East Yorkshire, in the final of the Papa Johns Regional One Championship on Sunday. And recent success has stirred golden memories. Back in the 1993-94 season, Havant hosted a full-strength London Irish in the fourth round of the Pilkington Cup. Will Knight was playing that day, which has passed into local legend, and also helped edge Exeter 9-3 in the same national knockout competition five years previously.

Knight, now head coach, reckons he is in his 50th season with Havant. As a child, he was present at the club’s inaugural minis morning because a neighbour, Roger Thompson, set it up. For the past decade, Knight’s eldest son, Joel, has captained the first team from outside centre. Two more Knight boys, Reuben and Jacob, complete the Havant midfield at fly-half and inside centre.

“We’d like to be thought of as a band of brothers,” Rob Matthews, the director of rugby, says. “It’s a cliche, I know. But we’re amateurs that don’t use the draw of pay and we’ve stuck to a ‘one-club’ mentality.

“Around 70 per cent of our first team have come through the junior teams. Some players have gone away to higher levels and come back again. We make sure to have ball-boys and ball-girls from the minis. When you’ve done that for a game with 1,000 spectators, I’d hope it would be inspiring.”

There is no hyperbole here. Havant draw between 400 and 500 people to most home games and hit four figures for the Papa Johns semi-final against Heath, another Yorkshire club. An epic defensive stand, roared on by that crowd, helped seal a 27-21 victory.

At the time of writing, six coaches and two minibuses have been booked to carry Havant followers to Twickenham this weekend.

The Papa Johns Community Cup competitions were introduced this season by the Rugby Football Union after a restructure of the grass-roots calendar, with the aim of engaging men’s and women’s players and giving clubs something else to play for into the spring. Teams were grouped into national tournaments based on league finishes and it has not been without its logistical challenges. Some rounds have been ravaged by walkovers.

Havant, though, have bought in wholeheartedly. They finished the league campaign strongly, ending up second to Wimbledon in the fifth tier, and targeted some strong cup performances as a springboard into 2023-24. There was an allure about taking on opponents from around England and, naturally, Twickenham loomed large.

Matthews, a former team-mate of Mike Teague at Moseley, deserves credit for his organisational perseverance. He was turned down by 16 different coach companies before the pool game against Shelford in Cambridgeshire over Easter weekend. Eventually, the Havant squad arrived in two minibuses.

“Cup rugby, for years and years and years, was a huge thing for Havant,” Will Knight remembers. “We had the John Player, the Pilkington, the Tetley’s and other versions. You qualified for the national competition by winning the county cup and you tried to have a good run.

“It’s produced some iconic, brilliant moments for the club over the years and we’d been robbed of it because we were in that middle group of clubs not in any club competitions – not low enough or high enough. It’s been great to be back and the run this year has been extremely exciting.”

Just as elite clubs are addressing balance sheets, sustainability is a watch-word at the community level. As a collective, Havant extol the virtues of “small-p professionalism”. Matthews explains that they have a healthy annual budget of around £300,000, boosted by renting out their clubhouse for events such as weddings and birthdays.

None of that money is handed to players, but the squad can take advantage of perks such as an on-site gym, rehabilitation facilities and even some GPS tracking. Joel Knight, the Havant skipper, sounds more grateful for the tougher patches and is looking upwards.

“We’ve gone from being a team scrabbling around trying to refind its identity to a point where we’re pushing for promotion back towards National Two,” he explains. “I’m incredibly proud of the players for sticking at it because there were times we were losing by 80 or 90 points every week for a season, which was pretty depressing. Now we’re on an upward curve and the club have done a brilliant job.

“When we stand in the changing room, you know that nobody in that circle is there to pick up a pay cheque. They care more about the club and the people they are playing for than the result. That’s what makes us quite a special group. We want to be a club who create memories for one another so we can look back in 10, 15 years’ time and have a laugh about it.”

A midfield of three siblings offers a leg-up in the cohesion stakes. Joel, 31, populates that area of the field with Reuben, 23, and Jacob, 28. He describes that as an “awesome” feeling – “my two brothers are my two best mates” – and following the Heath win, four Knights shared a moment of “realisation”. Will is going to celebrate his Havant half-centenary with a family picture on the Twickenham turf.

“It’s a great achievement for the club because we’ve never been to Twickenham before,” he says. “If I were a spectator and three of my sons were playing it would be something, but to be part of their group is wonderful. Hopefully we can go that last step and get the result as well, because we’re desperate to do that.”