If league football is Sittingbourne’s bread-and-butter, then the FA Cup is definitely the cake with icing on. And a cherry on top of that.

The famous old Cup brings excitement and possibly money (decent money at that) as well as glamour for a team who makes a bit of progress in the competition.

Sittingbourne would love to be that club, but so too, of course, would Saturday’s opponents Uxbridge who are the visitors to Woodstock in the preliminary round of what’s officially called the Emirates FA Cup.

The teams play at the same level in the BetVictor Isthmian League, Sittingbourne in the South East Division and Uxbridge in the South Central, and neither have won either of their league games so far this season.

Sittingbourne drew 1-1 away to Whitstable on the opening day of the season, a decent result after being reduced to 10 men in the first half when Roman Campbell was sent off for two yellow cards, and then were beaten 3-1 at home on Tuesday night by an impressive Cray Valley Paper Mills side.

Campbell, the on-loan young striker from Gillingham, scored in both matches and Sittingbourne can count themselves unlucky that Cray’s opening goal, which set them on the road to victory, only went in the far corner thanks to a huge deflection.

So a goal in each game for Campbell, but he won’t make it three out of three against Uxbridge, as he’s suspended and wouldn’t have been allowed to play anyway by Gillingham as they don’t want him Cup-tied. Promising news for the youngster.

While Sittingbourne were losing to Cray, Uxbridge were going down 2-0 away to Bracknell Town, having drawn 2-2 with Chertsey Town last Saturday after being two-up at the interval.

Sittingbourne and Uxbridge have met before, a dozen years ago in those weird days when the Brickies were placed in a more northern-based division full of teams from the other side of London and beyond.

It counts for nothing now that Uxbridge beat them in those days, but I remember one end-of-season match when Sittingbourne manager Steve Lovell was away and Steve Davies, then chairman of the supporters club, stood in for him on the touchline at Uxbridge. He probably found out it wasn’t quite as easy as it looks from the terraces!

The winners of Saturday’s match will receive £2,890 in prize money from the FA (the losers receive £960) and if the match is drawn the replay at Uxbridge will be a week on Tuesday.