Sittingbourne have had a mixed week which culminates on Saturday with a visit to the Isthmian South East early season pacesetters Three Bridges with boss Ryan Maxwell demanding a response after a very disappointing midweek at Greatness Park, Sevenoaks. 

A week after beating Cray Valley in the Trophy, and coming from two goals down to beat AFC Croydon Athletic last weekend, the Irishman was flummoxed by Wednesday’s single goal defeat to Sevenoaks, and when KSN caught up with him on Thursday afternoon, the Brickies boss told us, “ 

“We are in a tough period in terms of fixtures; they don’t come easy as we found out at Sevenoaks. You have to make sure that you are switched on for every single game, Three Bridges are the League leaders and we will respect that as we do every single week and we know we have a very tough game away from home ahead of us, but that’s how we like them!” 

“We like them tough and we like a challenge, and we will be running towards it especially after the disappointment of Wednesday night, and it is an opportunity to get a real bounce-back!” 

After the come back at the weekend to beat Croydon, Maxwell admitted that his sides’ performances have been as different as chalk and cheese. “They have,” he said, “That’s the thing with midweek games as they have the potential to throw up surprise results and we have seen that many times over the years of course, and ultimately we didn’t perform on Wednesday anywhere near as good as we did on Saturday when we were outstanding to a man with every single one being brilliant.  

“We made a couple of changes on Wednesday to freshen the team up but there was no reason that we shouldn’t have produced a similar performance to the weekend and I do believe that it had to be down to mentality as we have had some big games in October – two Trophy games against sides from the higher Leagues, and then Croydon, a very strong side in our division and we have come through them as winners.  

“So, I have to look at the game itself and what went wrong, what didn’t we do, what did we do, and what could have been done better? The answer is that we simply were not the same beast that we had been in the previous games and that is so disappointing.” 

“Away from home on a Wednesday night, you really have to approach it with a real focus, or you get caught short and that is what happened!” 

“Yet despite the result, we actually had clearer chances to win the game! They scored with a deflected goal and had created very little in front of our goal, but we had two really, really, really simple chances to not just level but to win the game – you just can’t miss those in a game like that, there were bad misses but I’m not going to heap blame as its part of the game!”