It’s a waiting game now for Rochester United as they await news of their fate.

They finished the season rock bottom of the Southern Counties East, Premier Division – but relegation isn’t a certainty.

Two go up from the Premier Division and two will be promoted from the league below, but no clubs are in a position to come down, meaning the league will need to bring in a club from elsewhere or hand Rochester a reprieve to keep a 20-team format. Only once the Football Association’s Leagues Committee have met in the middle of May will any movements be confirmed.

Club chairman Matt Hume, who replaced brother Lloyd at the helm just after Christmas, said: “We are really disappointed but we don’t know what’s going to happen.

“We finished bottom and we’re assuming we’ll be going down but there is talk that nobody will be relegated due to restructuring. It’s left us in no-man’s land a bit.

“We can’t really prepare for next season because we don’t know where we will be."

Whether they get a reprieve or not, Mr Hume insists they will be fighting afresh in August, scotching any rumours that they could be packing up.

“That’s something I definitely want to quash,” he said.

“I know there have been rumours, I don’t know where they’ve come from, but there is absolutely no truth in it.

“We are not in financial difficulty, we are self-supporting and we’ve got a lot of things going on at the ground. Where we have struggled is competing with the budgets of some of the clubs in the league.

“Up until a month and a half ago it was in our hands but momentum hasn’t gone our way.

“There were some games we didn’t get what we deserved and we should have got more out than we did. There are fine lines in football.”