There can be very few managerial appointments ever that has seen the appointee accept the position and the next day fly out of the country to do some amazing charitable work to build a new school for deprived children, but that’s exactly what happened to new Faversham Town boss Phil Miles.

Last week, Miles who has managerial experience coaching Chatham Town and whose full tie job is at a College in the North of the county, was appointed as joint successor to Ray Turner at Salters Lane along with former Dover Athletic midfielder Danny Chapman.

That was last Thursday – then on the Friday he was heading for Cape Town along with a party from the college to help with an international effort to build a new school.

In an exclusive interview for which we thank Miles for his valuable time this week, we caught up with him to explore his hopes for Faversham and to find out how he got involved with such a worthwhile cause.

“I don’t think a lot of people predicted our appointment,” Miles admitted.

“Judging by the reaction on social media, it’s surprised a lot of people. We went into the interview full of confidence and have obviously ticked many, if not all of the boxes for the Chairman and the committee and are now just grateful for the chance.”

“Danny was coach at Braintree after he packed up playing not long ago, before coaching as part of the Ebbsfleet United Youth section which is where we met about six years ago.”

“We coached together at the under 16s and we often talked about managing a first team somewhere – I had a few years at Chatham coaching the reserves and then the first team for a while – Danny’s eldest son is already playing over at East Grinstead – it’s the right time for us and we’re grateful to everyone involved.”

“We made it clear that I would be missing Greenwich Borough last weekend and Hastings this as a result of the trip.  Danny spoke with Clive Walker and Clive was, we’re delighted to say happy to be hanging around until I’m back!  When I get back next week, hopefully we’ll be able to get some stability going around the club.”

We asked Miles to tell us about his trip and the work that he and his colleagues have been doing this week.

He told us, “It’s all for a charity called the Mellon Education and we’re in Cape Town helping to build a school – the Charity has been running for over fifteen years; Mark Lindop who’s the President at Chatham, as well as being well known at Ebbsfleet, came to the college where I work and offered us the chance to bring three students out here to help in the project, which we’re all really excited about.”

“It’s given me an opportunity to think about what awaits us when we get back and I have to admit that I am really looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead for us and the step up.”

“We’ve been training twice a week through all the years with the youth teams, but it’s the Saturday afternoon that you really do miss – playing Sunday mornings with the kids is brilliant, but there really isn’t anything like the buzz that you get on Saturday mornings when you know you’re going into a game and getting back into adult football and just trying to progress Faversham as a club and a team and also we want to develop as managers and coaches.”

“Clive Walker has still been involved and if we’re still doing it at 73, then we’ve been doing something right, but that’s a long way off yet…”

“Sadly, Clive won’t be staying around – he’s been there with Danny whilst I’ve been away, but to be fair to him, he’s more than done his bit for football in Kent, and I think he’s looking forward to stepping down.”

“Clive knows that we want to come in and have a clean sweep and he’s happy to stand aside at the weekend. We may bring another coach in, but we’ll have to see in the next six weeks or so…”