London 3 South-West Leaders Andover lost at home for the first time in two seasons and Eastleigh missed a golden opportunity to reclaim top spot.

The league has now been thrown wide open with any two of four sides capable of grabbing the two promotion spots.

Andover had only a late try from Simon Preece and a penalty and conversion from Charlie Waite to show for what was, on the day, a pretty poor performance as they lost out 24-10 to London Exiles.

“It was one of those days every team gets now and then,” said Andover coach Andy Waite.

“Everything that could have gone wrong did and to be fair to Exiles they took full advantage of every error and once in front defended like men possessed.”

Eastleigh were beaten 29-17 at Old Mid-Whitgiftian – the Surrey side’s victory bringing them right into the promotion picture.

The match started well for Eastleigh who eventually benefitted from 20 minutes of pressure when second row Russ Smith touched down from a maul.

However the visitors were forced to reshuffle their line-up twice within a couple of minutes after Pete Noonan left the field with a knee injury and John Weatherall followed.

Whitgiftian went into the break 7-5 up from a converted try and moved on to 17-5 ahead before an Eastleigh comeback – Weatherall returning to the pitch and grounding two pushover tries to level the scores.

However, Eastleigh efforts were cancelled out when the home side struck with another two tries.

Head coach Andy Boyes said: “We are disappointed with our performance today given how well we played last week.

“We dominated the first 20 minutes and had a couple of opportunities to score early in the game. We got the first score and were looking strong but then two missed tackles in our 22 allowed Old Mids a score under the posts.”