2000–01 National Division Three North

2000-01 National Division Three North
Countries	England
Champions	Stourbridge
Runners-up	Sedgley Park (also promoted)
Relegated	Aspatria, Walsall
Attendance	40,865 (average 389 per match)
Highest attendance	1,500 (x2) Dudley Kingswinford at home to Stourbridge on 16 December 2000 & Stourbridge at home to Dudley Kingswinford on 31 March 2001
Lowest attendance	100 (x2) Aspatria at home to Sedgley Park on 18 November 2000 & Aspatria at home to Tynedale on 2 December 2000
Top point scorer	Paul Brett New Brighton 298 points
Top try scorer	Gary Marshall Nuneaton 20 tries
← 1999-00 2001-02 →

The 2000–01 National Division Three North was the second season (fourteenth overall) of the fourth division (north) of the English domestic rugby union competition using the name National Division Three North. New teams to the division included Dudley Kingswinford who were promoted as the champions of Midlands Division 1 and Tynedale who were champions of North Division 1 with no northern based teams being relegated from the 1999-00 Jewson National League One. The league system was 2 points for a win and 1 point for a draw with the promotion system changing for this season with a playoff system being introduced. The champions of both National Division Three North and National Division Three South would automatically go up but the runners up of these two divisions would meet each other in a one off match (at the home ground of the side with the superior league record) to see who would claim the third and final promotion place to National Division Two for the following season.

The season was a very fractured one due to the 2001 United Kingdom foot-and-mouth outbreak which primarily affected the two northern-most clubs in the division - Aspatria and Tynedale - leading to a large number of fixtures being cancelled in the latter half of the season. The league champions were Stourbridge who pipped Sedgley Park to the league title by just one point to gain promotion to the 2001–02 National Division Two. Sedgley Park would join them soon after when they won their promotion playoff game at home against the 2000-01 National Division Three South runners up Launceston in front of over 1,000 fans. The foot-and-mouth outbreak made relegation far from straightforward as initially the bottom two were Aspatria and Tynedale, who had played 18 games each - less than any of the other teams in the division. In Tynedale's case this was particularly hard as they were only 1 point behind 12th placed Sandal but had played six games less. In the end the RFU had to re-think relegation and used a complicated process based on early season form which meant that 14th placed Aspatria and 11th placed Walsall went down. Aspatria dropped to North Division 1 while Walsall went into Midlands Division 1.

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