Sittingbourne’s first home game of the New Year is for some supporters the biggest of the season, as its the “Swale-ico” as fierce rivals Sheppey United come to the Staxson Stadium, Woodstock in the early kick-off.

And for boss Reece Prestedge, he will be hoping that his side can extend their unbeaten run since taking over to ten games. Reflecting on his time back at Woodstock, Prestedge told us, “It feels like that I have been back at the club for ages now, I needed to be reminded that it’s only been nine games, we are all looking forward to 2026 and the New Year and seeing just how far we can go.”

“We finished 2025 with a great win at Merstham last Saturday – I think it was the best win that we have had so far. Merstham, as I said before in interviews, are a good team, a good outfit who have been together for a good few years now, who many expect to be up there as well, but we went there with a decent performance and got the points.”

“We’ve gone behind and recovered a couple of times already, no-one wants to go a goal down in any game, but it shows good character and if we do go a goal down, we don’t panic, we don’t take our foot off the pedal and we keep going trying to turn the deficit around. And that’s full credit to the boys to be fair.”

Included in the side at Merstham last weekend was defender Ben Swift who played his first ninety minutes in thirty months, and Prestedge conceded it wasn’t in the plan! “He wasn’t supposed to play the full ninety minutes,” the manager told us, “But because it was such a tight game, we didn’t want to change things as it proved vital and he made an unbelievable block late on!”

It won’t be the first time that Prestedge has pitted his wits against Kevin Watson’s Islanders this season. “I’ve come against Sheppey this year already from the time where I was helping out at Herne Bay – they are a tough outfit; like all teams they have threats and we know that we will have to turn up on the day Saturday afternoon!”

“You want to win all the local derbies that you play for bragging rights and that sort of thing, but we also have to win the game for ourselves and a home game in front of our own supporters. A win of course is a must to keep our great run going with such a lot of the season still to go.”

“We are in a good place at the moment with a couple of players potentially coming in weeks ahead, but it is nice to now know that we are only playing Saturday, Saturday, Saturday for the rest of the season (weather permitting of course) it does give you more time on the training field and to be with the boys in training; not having played Tuesdays and then a light session on the Thursday to have two full sessions gives us the opportunity to implement things that we still want to bring into the team and work on things that we need to!”

Image courtesy of Paul Golding