With just eight points covering the top five sides in the SCEFL Premier, KSN has been speaking to Deal Town boss Steve King, whose side are incredibly well placed – six points behind leaders Glebe but with five games in hand. 

Reflecting on the incredibly tight position of the League, King told us, “I think everyone expected Faversham to run away with it at the start of the season. I’ve got to be honest, when they invested the way they did and players they brought in, we were targeting a home Semi Final in the Play Offs.”

“We came third last year and fourth the year before that, so we thought if we could get second or third and get in the Play Offs and a home Semi-Final would be good.”

“But Faversham have not been as consistent as they would have liked, and it really opened it up. I think that currently it is a five-horse race for the title, which is great for the League whilst there are still ten or eleven sides thinking of the Play Offs so it’s really building to an exciting climax.” 

After having their game last weekend frozen off, we reflected on Deal reaching the last sixteen of the Isuzu Vase the week before and the manager said, “we were delighted to get through. Can’t say it was a “banana skin” as it was the last thirty-two of the Vase, but I think we went into the game with Cobham as favourites, which is a little bit of a different position for us.”

“We wanted to make sure that we continued our good form and got the job done and now we are off to Bridgewater in the next round.

“It was not the draw we wanted, but what I will say is that you can get carried away with draws – good draws and bad draws – but ultimately, they do not really mean anything.”

“I remember just last season, Punjab beat the side that won SCEFL, Erith & Belvedere in the semi-final of the Senior Trophy which people thought was good for us, but we lost the Final 6-0 and then we beat Erith 3-0 three days later… I do think you read too much into draws – it is what it is, and we are looking forward to it.” 

After the Vase success, Deal in their last game won 2-0 at Lydd Town and King admitted, “to be honest I was more delighted with that than the Vase win!”

“We want to progress in the Vase, but the Club has ambitions to try and get promoted and having already lost twice at Lydd this season, and knowing how strong their side is, to go and win their last Wednesday and keep a clean sheet in one of our games in hand was very, very pleasing!” 

Deal are on an amazing run but started the season dreadfully. “We simply had no players available,” the manager confessed.

“I think we had fifteen players unavailable for the first game, thirteen for the second League game, but we did not panic – unless you are Man City, I do not think that are many, if any, squads in the country that could have coped with having a whole eleven and a bench not being available!”

“No disrespect to the reserve and young players that came in, but it just shows the step up and the difference in standards, and as soon as we got the majority back, we are now nineteen games unbeaten!” 

The early start to the season saw King’s side not win until the fifth game of their season.

“I’m not a massive fan of the SCEFL starting the season the last Saturday of July.” he admitted with some justification.

“It was ridiculous for us as we’ve a lot of people who have kids, a lot who are involved at schools meaning that the season starts the week our summer holidays start.”

“We do not pay the boys enough to say that they cannot go on holiday with their family so add that to the injuries and the “wedding season”, the poor start was down to missing so many, but hopefully we will not look back and it will not cost us come April!”