Sittingbourne will be looking to get back to winning ways this weekend after being denied three points on Tuesday in the Swale derby with Sheppey United. Thing is its League leaders Three Bridges next for Reece Prestedge and the Brickies at Woodstock.

After having their fifteen game unbeaten run go at second placed AFC Croydon Athletic last weekend, the Brickies were denied an instant return to winning ways by Sheppey’s late equaliser on Tuesday night, and with results elsewhere the same night, the race for the post season now is really on with just six points dividing third place AFC Whyteleafe and seventh placed Deal Town with the Brickies in fifth three points in front of Deal.

We spoke to Prestedge ahead of the weekends visit of the divisions leaders and he told us, “It’s going to be a big test for us this weekend! They are the League leaders for a reason, but that said, these are the sort of games that you want to be a part of – you want to be up for the game and want to be a part of it because everyone wants to be where they are!”

“Tuesday was disappointing mainly because of the second half performance.  If you look at the game I don’t think anyone, especially in the second half, could turn round and say that Sheppey didn’t deserve that goal as I think they had a very good second half and whilst I don’t want to take anything away from them, but I just don’t think that we were at it in the second half. I thought we were, shape wise, all over the place and we just couldn’t get going, whereas in the first half I thought that we were really strong.”

“I thought we got a response after Saturday definitely in the first half as I thought we were good value despite going one nil down, but we had the character and hunger to come back, whilst the second half just looked like playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday caught up with us a little bit!”

“It’s become really tight now in the play-off places and we would have loved to have pulled away with a bigger gap. But with ten games to go, we are very much still in it, and we just have to make sure that we do the right things to stay where we are if not pushing on. If you look at the amount of games that teams have lost and dropped points in last year, I don’t think teams lost anywhere near the number that the top sides have lost – or even dropped points in – this year.”

“We had to make changes on Tuesday as we have had a couple missing and lost Bags (skipper Bagason Graham) and Dee (Dsean Theobalds) on Tuesday at half time but hopefully we’ll have a couple of them back for the weekend.”