Winchester are within one win of being crowned South League Hampshire/Surrey Regional Division 1 champions after a 5-0 victory over relegation threatened Hamble put them within three points of the title.

But even with the championship now within touching distance, skipper Kevin Boniface is refusing to buy the celebratory champagne and take it to Fareham for a promotion knees up on Saturday tea-time.

“That’s going to be a tough one and I’m not tempting fate by taking a load of bottles in the boot of my car to Henry Cort,” he said.

“They will have a fair number of national league bench players lining up against us so it’s going to be no easy ride.”

Kent Langridge notched his third hat-trick of the season as Winchester strengthened their hold on the R1 leadership and kept the points gap between themselves and Woking to seven.

It took 30 anxious minutes for Winchester to finally make headway.

The evergreen Richard Jones won the ball in the centre circle and spied Craig Jeffrey making a run deep in Hamble territory and found him with a precision pass.

Jeffrey took a sweeping run to the edge of the Hamble D and then sent a perfect pass for Langridge, waiting at the far post, to tap in.

Five minutes later, on the stroke of half-time, Langridge was on hand again at a penalty corner, riding the first tackle and then sweeping home to make it 2-0. Hamble continued to cause Winchester some concern as the second half commenced, but their level of penetration had dropped compared to the opening phases with Boniface and Adam Tollefsen dealing more comfortably with any attacking threat.

Any thought of a Hamble recovery was gone when Mark Maunsell received a right slipped pass at a penalty corner and finished clinically at the second attempt to make it 3-0.

Maunsell then stepped up to calmly convert a penalty stroke with 20 minutes still remaining.

Hamble had one or two tricks still up their sleeves and avoided a goal deluge by pressing at the other end of the pitch with McCallum having to make an excellent point-blank save before seeing a shot pass just wide.

However, with Winchester’s two most effective players, Maunsell and Langridge, working well as unit, another goal was always on the cards and it came when Maunsell found Langridge wide left in the D and the striker found the back of the goal with a perfect reverse strike strike to complete his third hat-trick of the season to take his goals tally to 25.