Sittingbourne boss Ryan Maxwell is excited about the prospect of his first “El-Swalico” on Monday lunchtime and is relishing the challenge.

However, whilst the excitement is rising, the Brickies coach knows of the important trip to new boys Horndean first. 

“Horndean are going to offer a tough test in what will be a big game for them as I believe it’s their first home game since promotion.”

“We’ll be going looking for better luck than we had around our first game (a 3-2 home loss to Cray Valley) and hopefully will have a couple of our walking wounded back – if not for Saturday, then hopefully for Monday and what will be my first experience of the Swale Derby – I’ve heard a lot about it and it’s something that everyone looks forward to.”

“It’s a derby which are always competitive and have an added edge to them. I used to love playing in derbies so no doubt our players will be extra motivated for it, and I believe we get a good crowd too…” 

“I understand that games like that are very important to our fans and local people, and I’ll be respecting that… We’re all really looking forward to the game.” 

“I have seen Sheppey play and they are a good footballing side and have a way of playing. I’m looking forward to pitting my wits against them as they’ve got some good players, some talented boys and are a descent side and they’ll be a good side for the whole season, I’m sure.”

“They moved the ball around well on their surface against what was I respect poor opposition, but I took a lot from the trip, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re at our best!” 

“Our defeat to Cray Valley was frustrating… well that’s one word that I would use. I felt as though all our luck ran out that day, the way everything transpired.”

“We had illness in the camp, we signed a new player the day before and he got injured in warm up, and then the player who replaces him is injured before half time – it was just a knock-on effect and everything that could go wrong, did!”

“Thankfully, those players will hopefully be involved today – I’m sure it will happen to a lot of teams during the season, so it was unfortunate for us to get so much bad luck on the first day of the season after we were all building up to the start, but we all know that they do level themselves out over the course of the season.”