After guiding Sittingbourne to the quarter finals of the FA Trophy last season, Ryan Maxwell and his side are back on that particular “Road to Wembley” as the Brickies head to Sussex this weekend to face newly promoted Crowborough Athletic in the Second Qualifying Round of this season’s competition. 

“We’re playing a team that I don’t know too much about in complete honesty,” Maxwell admitted to KSN this week.

“Away from home always poses its own threats so we have had to find out what we can and be as prepared as we possibly can be – it’s going to be a tough game and we will approach it with all guns blazing knowing that there has to be a result on the day and we will have to go at them and we will be going to win!” 

Maxwell’s side then make the same trip to Sussex and Crowborough for a League fixture in a fortnight – with a potential third trip if Crowborough overcome Hastings in the Velocity Trophy – which left Maxwell admitting, “Isn’t that just the nature of the beast? It’s the luck of the draw!”

“Saturday means that we will get an insight of them, but there is a lot at stake this weekend and we need to make sure that we don’t just hopefully win the game, but we will also get an insight for the League game in a fortnight’s time. There is a double edge to Saturday, and we have to treat it very seriously!” 

The Brickies maintained their long unbeaten home run in the League on Tuesday as Richie Hamill’s late thunderbolt earned them a point against Hastings.

“I felt Tuesday we were “robbed” of two points, if I’m honest,” Maxwell admitted. “They had two attempts on target – one of which we have really just slept on, and they scored from it.”

“We had a lot of chances in the first half and one thing that I will say is that despite the fact that we missed a penalty – and we did miss a lot of chances; we hit the bar and their keeper made a few good saves, the team really kept going with full belief that they would get that equaliser and I have no doubt in my mind that if we had got it earlier we would have got the three points.”

“Really gutted for the lads – they didn’t get what they deserved on Tuesday that is for sure but ultimately, we do have to take the positives from it and that we did create a load of chances and we got a point.”

“We should have got three – we need to address a couple of things, we know that but the actual control, style of play and quality of it, I was very pleased with! Loads of positives, we didn’t stop going and we got the point and who knows just how important that point could be!”  

Picture supplied by Ian Scammell.