Invicta will be aiming for their fastest ever double when they take on Lowestoft Town at the Fullicks Stadium on Saturday, just four days after beating the Trawlerboys 2-0 up in Suffolk on Tuesday.

These quick return games rarely occur often these days, but re-arranged fixtures have brought this one about, as they did when Folkestone met Harlow Town twice in the same space of time last season.

“Yes – and we didn’t do too well in the second game here at home after being quite pleased with a point at snatching a 2-2 draw at Harlow on the Tuesday” recalled boss Neil Cugley this morning, Thursday.

Cugs is quite right, as Folkestone failed to build on that decent away result and crashed 4-1 in front of their own supporters.

“It took us a long time to get over that and left us chasing safety from relegation right till the end of the season, but we’re in a far better position now.”

The long serving boss is even starting to believe that his side can finish in the top five or six in the Bostik Premier Division this time around, despite having made very few real changes from the squad that spent so much of the last campaign looking over their shoulders.

“I think we’ve matured as a team this season” he said. “Having Micheal Everitt back from the start has helped while Callum (Davies) has shown his class from playing at the higher level.

“Draycs (Ian Draycott) is back near his best while Ade (Yusuff) has been a revelation and is a very important player for the way that we are playing and JV (Josh Vincent) is having his best season for years.

“A couple of the younger lads are growing into really good, consistent players at this level and that is very pleasing to see.”

Following a modest start to the season, Invicta suddenly produced a stunning run of eight wins on the bounce and rocketed up to second in the table.

And despite one or two setbacks they have, in fact, not been out of the top six ever since, despite losing four successive league games in the first three weeks of December.

The play offs are not a banned subject at Cheriton Road, but it’s not something that the manager talks too much about admitting that people got carried away with the way things were going in November and that his ‘Manager of The Month’ award was duly cursed with those four defeats on the bounce.

It’s been oft-repeated around the club that they have yet to face title near certainties Billericay Town yet and have tough return matches against the Blues’ main championship rivals Dulwich Hamlet as well Hendon and Staines Town but three more points on Saturday will taken Folkestone onto 55 points already this season with 17 league games still to go.

“That’s our immediate target” said the manager. “We ended last season with 55 points and it’s always a target to do better than we did in the previous campaign.

“That will be one more box to be ticked off and we’ll have to see where we go from there!”