Cray Valley PM’s eight-day trilogy with Carshalton Athletic reaches its peak this weekend, with boss Steve McKimm calling for his side to complete the double knock out to his former club.

Valley knocked the Robins out of the Emirates FA Cup on Tuesday courtesy of Cem Tumkaya’s last minute winner after Freddie Parker levelled the scores on the night – all that after they had come back from 3-1 down in Saturday’s original tie thanks to Kyrell Lisbie and Adam Coombes’ penalty two minutes from time. 

After a great Tuesday night for the Club, they go again on Saturday as they face the same opposition in the Isuzu FA Trophy. 

Speaking to KSN after Tuesday’s win, McKimm agreed it had been a good night. “It certainly was,” he said, “But the game should have been dead and buried on Saturday as we had three great chances before they had a shot on our goal!”

“We showed good character to come back from 3-1 down where again a few people I know have said that they should have had the tie done and dusted there – they probably should have done being 3-1 up!”

“But when you have the side that we have assembled and the character that they have amongst themselves, they came back and should have scored again in the last minute!” 

“Unbelievable resilience and character on Saturday, and I went into Tuesday knowing that if they put the same performance in, we wouldn’t be too far away from getting the victory that we deserved.” 

“The League goes out of the window when you are playing Cup games – we knew what we were up against from Saturday and had watched them beforehand, and Tuesday night we followed the same game plan as Saturday and stopped them doing what they are good at!”

“We created numerous chances before they scored, and I told them at half time how much we believe in them and how much they had to believe in themselves to get back into it.”

“It was a fantastic ball to the back-post for Freddie and then we kicked on from there and got the winner!” 

The two sides now meet again this weekend and McKimm told us, “They might want to get “revenge” from Tuesday. But if you play football for revenge – which is why I have not out anything about revenge on the game after our time there – you should not be in football.”

“You should be in football to win every game and play every game to the maximum of your ability. There will be no edge on the game – we will go and do what we do, they will do what they do and then come five o’clock, the result will be whatever it is.” 

“We want to win every game and get through, but the relevance of the money to the Club on Tuesday compared to Saturday is chalk and cheese – it was around £6,000 in the Cup for getting through, whilst in the Trophy it’s £2,500/£3,000 which is half the money!”

“Yes, we want to the win the tie, yes, we want to try and get more money for the Club, but if you look at it from a team like us from Step Four, I cannot think of any that have gone all the way in the competition.”

“So, the further you can go in the FA Cup the more money you get for the Club and at this moment in time until we “start” our League campaign properly, whilst we are in the competitions we want to get as much money as possible for the Football Club!” 

“I haven’t even looked at when we’re actually playing a League game – we were supposed to be playing Ashford on Tuesday but that’s been cancelled ahead of our Cup game at Enfield next weekend as it’s a big game for both clubs as it’s a chance to get into the First Round proper and you’ve got to have everything on point to get through.”

“So, I do not know when we are playing a League game as we are concentrating on the next game which is Carshalton in the Trophy on Saturday and when that is over, we will focus on Enfield.” 

“We can’t get carried away with ourselves and run away because we have another game that has got money on it for the Football Club.”