Herne Bay go into Saturday’s game with Burgess Hill looking to continue the form that is making Winches Field a fortress.

With six wins out of seven home League fixtures, the Bay will be looking to extend that winning sequence and boss Ben Smith has been talking to KSN and knows that his side are in a great position going into an important time of the season.

“We’re a few games behind everyone else, so I do think that a few people have “forgotten” about us, which I think could be a good thing,” the Bay boss admitted. “You keep hearing the same teams mentioned and weren’t not often included which is nice to be under-rated if I’m honest. We’re quietly in the background clicking along.

“We did some stats and in the season that COVID hit first time we got fifteen points from the first twelve games and today we’ve got twenty-six – it’s all about progression for us and keeping improving and see where it takes us and so far, we’ve made massive improvements at the start of our season.”

“The good thing so far is that there hasn’t been one game this season where we can say that we weren’t good enough; even the games we’ve lost to Ramsgate and Ashford, we were right in the game make no mistakes – each of those games have fine margins – and the biggest thing is not to dwell on the defeats and make sure you recover quickly and that’s what we’ve been good at doing so far!”

Brown takes his charges into the weekend’s game with Burgess Hill on the back of a 6-1 demolition of East Grinstead in the League Cup on Tuesday. “I was a bit disappointed with them if I’m honest,” the Bay boss told us. “Every club can do what they want, but I think it was disrespectful the side that they brought down as it was a young side and I don’t mean any disrespect to those players, but I think if you’re going to enter a competition, enter it properly. That said, it was great to get through…”

“We’ve had a great start at home this year and that will look to continue at the weekend. The gates haven’t hit the heights that they have in the past – but I expect that to come as a lot of the clubs we’ve played already don’t have an away support and are getting one hundred at their home games. We’ve got some big games coming up and I’m sure that our average attendance will go up – and that does make a difference… We’ve got a massive pitch at Herne Bay and very vocal fans and those little things do give you an edge.”

“If you look at our games in hand, we really are positioned very nicely but you’ve got to win them which is the hard bit, but of you look at it we are a side that could easily come up on the rails and leap-frog quite a few with the games in hand, but we’re focused on one game at a time. They may be great opportunities for us to take points off the top sides, but we’ve got to win games like Saturday to make those game what they will be – we can’t drop off and drop silly points.”