Whitstable Town may have been crowned SCEFL Premier Champions already, but the Oystermen still have games to play that will have a bearing on both ends of the table, a fact that boss Jamie Coyle is well aware of.

Speaking to KSN ahead of a double home Easter weekend which will end on Monday with the presentation of the League trophy at the club’s home game with Hythe Town, begins with a showdown with the side who has run Whitstable the closest in the League Fisher.

“We might have ended twenty-two points clear after thirty-one games, but we’ve had to go on a league run of twenty-five without defeat to get there and the boys have had to deliver some fantastic performances on a consistent basis. We are in a fantastic place and all the hard work from every single person involved – the management team through the players to anyone associated with the Football Club – has ultimately been rewarded and they have been absolutely relentless all season long with our performance levels, work rate and that’s the reason why we are Champions so early this year!”

“It’s great to get things done so early!” he went on. “For any team at any level to win a League so early in March is a fantastic achievement and it allows us now to prepare ourselves for the Senior Trophy with Punjab on April 19 and start looking at next season – absolutely fantastic!”

“We’ve five games left – we have an internal target and a points target that we want to beat so there’s no question whatsoever of a down tools approach at all. We are going to be preparing for every game in the same way we have all season and making sure that we provide professional performances as the crowds and our fans are still going to be paying their well-earned money to get in and see us.

“We have a job after looking at the previous points totals of the Champions in recent years, and we have a target now we want to beat. We want to make sure that when we get to the Gallagher and the Cup Final with Punjab, we have momentum – we haven’t lost a game in the League in 2026, and we want to make sure that stays between now and the end of the season.

“The professionalism of the boys will continue, and no-one will be allowed to slack off, and we will continue to push and test each other until the very end of the season.”

We asked Coyle to take a step back and look at the tight race for play-off places which sees six sides within four points of each other with potentially two spaces available as second and third – Fisher and Bearsted – are five points clear of fourth (currently Larkfield), and Coyle said. “It’s great for the League and shows just how tough it’s been this year!

“We have had to deal with every single game we have played being a Cup Final for our opposition! It’s such a tight League and I still think that there a lot of bumps in the road for several teams. It will be interesting to see what happens for the play-off places and they will be really competitive, I am sure.”