Haven could still survive in the Championship if crisis club Sheffield Eagles fold.

Sheffield’s director of rugby Mark Aston has said the club is homeless and in crisis, with just a few weeks before it “ceases to exist”.

If that happened, presumably only the last team in Championship One would go down and currently the two Cumbrian clubs share bottom spot.

Going into the last games of the season Town, who travel to Halifax, have a superior points differential to Whitehaven, who entertain Swinton.

Whitehaven chairman Tommy Todd said: “Nobody wants to see clubs fold and I would feel sorry if Sheffield went.

“But if it does offer us a chance of staying up we have to try and take it.

“Even before the news on Sheffield we were looking to go into the last game with a positive approach and win it. This will give us a little bit more incentive.

“We have just survived by the skin of our teeth in the Championship for the previous two seasons and we are already looking at ways of re-organising the club to bring in new money.

“Times change and we have to move with it by trying to appeal to a different type of audience than watched us a decade and more ago.”

Enlarging on Sheffield’s predicament in the local Sheffield paper, Aston said: “Everything was going in the right direction. There was a new stadium coming, we had a full-time squad. Twelve months later and we are in a precarious situation because our investor wants to quit.

“If people were helping him he wouldn’t walk away. At this moment in time he’s not getting the support he needs.

“If we don’t get someone in in the next month, Sheffield Eagles will be dead and buried. Where can we play? What can we do?”

The future of the Eagles, who emerged as a phoenix club following an ill-fated merger with Huddersfield Giants in 1999, has been uncertain since the closure of Don Valley Stadium, their home of more than 20 years, in 2013.

Since then the club has played its home games in various places, from Owlerton Stadium to the Keepmoat Stadium in Doncaster, ending up this past season at Sheffield Hallam University Sports Park.

A proposed new stadium, as part of the £55m Olympic Legacy Park on the former Don Valley site, has always been reliant on investment from the Eagles.

Work on an all-weather community pitch at the site is due to start in October. But Aston claims a lack of support from the city has put investors off the stadium project and placed the club in jeopardy.

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