taken up by experienced player Justin Gregory on a temporary basis which was made permanent in January 2018. The club had a difficult season, being bottom of the league for most of the year and eventually finished bottom of the table. Justin Gregory left the managers position in May 2018. Former Mile Oak manager Ben Shoulders took over as manager soon after, ready for the 2018/19 season which will once again be in Division One after the club gained a reprieve from relegation. After a difficult start to the season, Ben Shoulders left the managerial position in December 2018 and the very experienced Sammy Donnelly was appointed in his place on New Year's Eve to try and stabilise the club. In March 2020 it was announced that the club's owner had handed possession of the ground back to the local council after it had terminated his lease of Old Barn Way due to “significant mismanagement issues and safety concerns"; he had breached legal repair obligations with regard to water damage, broken roofs and unsafe block walls left untreated, whilst standard electrical checks had not been completed and no fire safety measures were in place. The council also reported a number of serious licensing breaches of the lease, when the site had been illegally sublet to a range of organisations by the tenant for personal profit. The club was thus left homeless. In May 2020 a new set of directors founded Southwick Football Club Community Interest Company in a bid to take the historic club forward. They made public the club's debts as being almost £500,000. With no ground to play at, and not being able to continue to use the Southwick Football Club name without also formally taking on the historical debts of the company, the club was wound up. Staff and supporters subsequently established a phoenix club, Southwick 1882 F.C. , in July 2020 to ensure the survival of Southwick's name and history. In doing so, the new club had to drop two levels down in the non-league football pyramid, relinquishing the defunct club's senior status in the process, and started life under its new name in the second tier of the Mid-Sussex Football League for the 2020/21 season. Having won promotion to the top tier of the Mid-Sussex Football League in their inaugural season, in July 2021 a policy disagreement arose between the club directors and the first