Steve King’s Deal Town side reached the promised land of the Isthmian League with a 3-1 win over Lydd Town last weekend and the manager couldn’t be happier.

That win over Lydd Town was Deal Town’s twenty-seventh League win in thirty-six games still with four games to play. 

Despite their “hangover” defeat to Punjab United on Tuesday, what Deal Town have achieved this season in playing so many games and never losing their momentum despite playing three times a week for what has seemed to be an age is simply incredible and a massive credit to King and his coaching staff. 

Speaking to KSN this week, the Manager told us, “We were really pleased to get the job done on Saturday. We had had a tough week, dropping points in a couple of games which we had not done for a while, but it meant that we won the League at home on a Saturday with a great win in front of a massive crowd.” 

“It was great for our supporters who have been massive for us down the stretch. I cannot remember the last time we did not get five hundred for a home game – to have nearly fifteen hundred there at the weekend was amazing and you cannot help but be motivated by backing like that and they have played a massive part in getting us over the line.” 

Reflecting on what the Club has achieved, the manager went on, “Getting out of this division is incredibly difficult. I think until people have worked in SCEFL, there is a certain amount of disrespect towards it.”

“I think people, when teams have been relegated, they think that they will go straight back up. We have seen it with Whitstable – they came down and have not set the world alight for a couple of seasons. Faversham have come down this year and spent significant sums of money and have not been able to win it.” 

“It has been an awful lot of hard work to get out of the League, but as a Club and a group of players and management team, we now go again.”

“We know it is going to be a new and exciting, different challenge as we look forward to Step Four football. We pride ourselves on working hard and doing things the right way and we will do that again next year and see where it takes us!” 

“We have not had talks with individual players yet, but if you look at our turnover of the past few years, it has been very low!”

“A lot of the boys have remained loyal and stuck to the project. We did not win promotion before now, so hopefully there will not be a huge number of changes – the players hopefully will not be rushing to move on as they are all excited by the promotion and challenge of playing Isthmian football next year.”

“That will I am sure will be something that I will deal with once the season has finished.” 

“Hopefully we will be able to take the momentum that we’ve had this year forward – our home record in the last couple of years has been fantastic; we know how to play at home, we’re confident at home; hopefully we will get big crowds – it’s very hard to make predictions, but I think we will certainly be competitive.”

“We have a lot of players who have Step Four experience whilst players who have been with us a long time have proved that they can play at that level and so it will be an exciting challenge.” 

“This season has been a lot of pressure; a lot of the players who we have brought to the Football Club or have stayed are here because the ambition was to get promoted, and when you’re expected to win every week, it’s not easy”

“So we are looking forward to being underdogs a little bit more often next year – it’s going to be an exciting time!” 

Picture supplied by Deal Town.