The Football Association have released the provisional allocations for clubs at step five and six of the non-league pyramid for the 2019-20 season with three new sides for Hassocks to potentially face in the Southern Combination League Premier Division.
Both Alford and Steyning Town have been promoted from Division One whilst Horley Town have been laterally moved across from the Combined Counties League Premier Division.
Chichester City have been promoted into the Bostik League South East following their title winning campaign with Shoreham and Arundel both relegated after filling the bottom two positions in the table.
Alford will provide completely new opposition for the Robins with the two sides never having met in senior football before. Their elevation to the top flight of the Southern Combination League completes a remarkable rise through the pyramid.
They only joined the Southern Combination from the West Sussex League in 2015, spending three seasons in Division Two before winning promotion to senior football for the first time at the end of the 2017-18 campaign.
They’ve now won Division One at the first time of asking, losing just two games all last season to beat Steyning to the title by three points.
Steyning themselves will be playing top flight football for the first time since the 1985-86 season when they won their second league title before moving to the Wessex Football League.
They returned to the Southern Combination via the Combined Counties in 1994, but were placed in Division One where they have remained ever since apart from a five season spell in Division Two around the turn of the century.
The Robins and the Barrowmen have met four times in the league, all in Division One and most recently in the 1994-95 season.
Hassocks were on their way to second place and promotion that year and they did so taking four points off Steyning with a 3-0 triumph at the Beacon and a 1-1 draw at the Shooting Field.
The two sides last met in the second round of the Sussex Senior Cup in November 2015. Steyning were the hosts and they pulled off a shock 3-1 victory, Hassocks gifting Danny Gainsford and former Robin Craig Knowles two goals inside the opening hour.
The visitors did pull one back when Phil Gault rose to head home a free kick in the 85th minute but any hopes they had of forcing extra time were extinguished when Rob Clark added a third for Steyning almost immediately from the restart.
That was Steyning’s first ever win in competitive football against Hassocks. The overall head-to-head reads six Hassocks wins to the Barrowmen’s sole success with two draws thrown in from nine games so far.
Horley meanwhile have been regular pre-season friendly opponents for Hassocks down the years but there has only been one competitive meeting between the two sides.
That came in the first round of the FA Vase in the 2016-17 season. The Robins were making their return to the national cup competition after a year of absence but it didn’t go particularly well with Horley winning 4-2 at the New Defence.
Three of those goals arrived in the opening half hour. Kyle Hough, Ryan Brackpool and Richard Whetton put the hosts in firm control of the tie.
Whetton then made it 4-0 win 15 minutes remaining before the Robins belatedly added some respectability to the score line with two goals in the final 10 minutes, Jamie Hillwood firing home from the edge of the box and then Josh Hawkes converted a late penalty.
