While the 2019/20 football season will be completely erased from memory for many, it will be forever etched into the history of one local club.

Needingworth United are celebrating an honours double after the Cambridgeshire County League opted to use the points-per-game (PPG) formula to settle all divisions below Step 7.

It’s an outcome which has handed Brett Swales’ side the Division 4B title to add to their Huntingdonshire Lower Junior Cup crown which they won in March.

United beat Stilton Reserves 1-0 in the final of the only county competition to be completed before the season was shutdown by the Coronavirus pandemic.

Swales’ men sat fourth in the Division 4B standings when the campaign was brought to an early climax, but they were armed with a stack of games in hand on the teams above them.

And their success means the club is back on the right track after being forced to fold their first team last summer after a mass exodus of players.

“It’s a great achievement to win a league and a cup in the same season,” said Swales.

“The boys all worked really hard up until football had to be stopped.

“We would obviously have preferred to finish the season in the conventional way and won the title on merit, but I feel the decision to go own the PPG route is the fairest outcome in the situation we’re in.

“It was really disappointing last summer to lose a team, but winning a cup and a title is exactly what the club needed to bounce back.

“Only four members of last season’s first team stayed with us and we were able to add in four really good 16 year-olds from the village.

“Hopefully we can keep building now and get the club back up to where it was previously.”

Needingworth won’t actually get their hands on another piece of silverware as no trophies will be awarded to league winners.

Swales’ side had been in with a chance of a treble as they were also through to the Reg Haigh & Arthur Peck Cup final which had been scheduled for late March but will not now take place.

Two other local clubs are set for promotion in the Cambridgeshire County League with unbeaten Brampton and Houghton & Wyton climbing from Division 1B into Kershaw Senior B Division for next term.

Cambridgeshire County League bosses sought the opinions of members clubs on how to conclude the season with the PPG method being the preferred option.