Sittingbourne moved back to within two points of Isthmian South East leaders Ramsgate after taking six more home points with wins over Lancing and East Grinstead Town and boss Ryan Maxwell wants to keep his focus on the league for now.
With their FA Trophy last sixteen tie at Southend United now very much on the horizon, boss Ryan Maxwell is still totally focused on Isthmian League matters as the Brickies make the trip to face AFC Croydon Athletic this weekend, and the Irishman has been talking to KSN.
“Croydon are a team who have some very talented boys,” Maxwell told us,” They are definitely a team if you take for granted will punish you.”
In the reverse fixture, the 3-1 Brickies’ win was the scoreline after the first fourteen minutes and Maxwell said. “We started like a house on fire at home and I’m sure that they will have that on their mind on Saturday and be prepared for us again.”
“It’s another tough away game, all away games have their added difficulty of course and we will have to make sure that we are prepared and well versed for a very dangerous Croydon side!”
After losing two league games after the club’s terrific Trophy win over Salisbury, Maxwell admitted that there was some trepidation going into last weekend’s home game with Lancing.
“Any manager will tell you that there is a little bit of anxiety about your own team is you haven’t played for two weeks, it could have gone either way and lots of time it can go more negative than positive, so to score eight goals, I was over the moon on Saturday night because the boys showed tremendous professionalism.”
“It was the word used beforehand and drummed into them that they needed to show that and my goodness they did, it was a great example of the mental strength and the focus that this squad has there was no rustiness there visually and they have to take great credit for that!”
“That took us into Tuesday night against East Grinstead who are in decent form and of course recently beat Ramsgate. Their away form is good and we knew it would be another tough game and again a great performance on a cold night, I was really pleased with the overall control.”
“We could have had more goals but we limited them to one chance and a half chance! We made a couple of changes which was important as we needed to freshen things up.”
“There is no pressure on us at all, we weren’t ever tipped other than in fans polls to be where we are. We are not designed to win the league in what we have at our disposal, so there is no pressure on us, we are just enjoying the fight and will enjoy it every week and the pressure is certainly on Ramsgate.”
“And it is now heavily so we have to play them again, but that’s after sixteen more games on the last day of the season, there’s a long, long way to go with twists and turns I am sure aplenty. We are just going to enjoy the ride and see where it takes us!”