Sittingbourne take their impressive winning run on the road this weekend to Southern Premier side Winchester City in the Isuzu FA Trophy for what is the Brickies first ever appearance in this stage of the competition. 

Sittingbourne have only appeared in the second-round proper once before in 1999 when they received a bye to this stage of the Trophy, but this year Ryan Maxwell’s side have won through beating Sutton Common Rovers, Kingstonian, Bognor Regis Town and Dover Athletic to send them to Hampshire on Saturday. 

Speaking to KSN this week, Maxwell told us, “We’re in a good place in terms of form; I think last Saturday (a 5-0 win over Deal Town) was a flattering win for us in all honesty but still the good signs were there.

“We were very good in front of goal and certainly had some good cutting edge about it, we were sharp and confident and imaginative and that is the sort of things that you want from your front players; ultimately we kept a clean sheet at the other end as well, so in terms of our last outing, it was a very good one and our form have been very, very good up to now but we won’t go into the weekend over confident that is for sure.” 

The Brickies were dumped out of the FA Cup earlier in the season by another Southern Premier side, Plymouth Parkway and Maxwell conceded that lesson had been learned that day.

“If you don’t learn something from days like that, then you are probably not the brightest,” the Brickies boss admitted.

“I certainly won’t be making the same mistakes again in terms of anything that could be better with our preparations, so there is a bit of that to it. We have been beaten by a team in their League before this season.

“We’ve been looking at the differences in the approaches to Plymouth and Dover and seen what was missing from the Plymouth game and make sure that we don’t make the same mistake again!”

Maxwell then added, “For me that has been my main focus this week, and hopefully we will go not over-confident, very respectful, focused and we go there towards the top of our League but not with any arrogance.” 

“Plymouth is possibly the one game this season where we haven’t shown what we are about at all. Every game is different, but I still look at the preparation and the buildup and I still think that things that week were not exactly correct and unfortunately, I wasn’t in the dug-out for that game and I am reminded of it and I am sure that that played a part as well.” 

“There will be no excuses this week. I am definitely in the dug-out this Saturday. We travel with a strong squad as we are getting people back who have been missing.

There may be a returning face in the squad for the weekend,” Maxwell teased, “other than a couple of knocks from the Deal game I think we are in a good place!”