With the season just a few weeks old we caught up with Ian Varley, the Holmesdale manager, to find out how his side have fared in the club’s opening fixtures. 

Speaking to Kent Sports News, he said: “Obviously everyone wants to get off to a good start but we’ve had some difficult fixtures along with lots of travelling so it’s been tough. Pre-season never gives you a true reflection of what you’ve got in the squad as it’s not a competitive environment and I’ve learnt more about my players in these first few games than I did during the pre-season.”

Holmesdale kicked off the season with an FA Cup fixture, which is a little bit away from the tradition of starting with a league game and its not how Varley would normally like to start the season.

He added: “I’m not a fan at all of having the FA Cup game as the first fixture but it’s the same for all clubs at level so its something we have to live with. Loxwood were better than us on the day and I had no complaints with the result.”

With regards to the league campaign it has been a tough start with one win and one defeat for the Dalers and Ian is looking to build on the victory over Crockenhill.

“The Lydd game was very disappointing and I made that known to the players afterwards, we cant perform like that and not compete if we want to win games at this level. I made six changes for the Crockenhill game and we put in a much better performance and fully deserved the 3-0 win. Consistency is huge at any level and if you want to get promoted that’s what you need.

“The clean sheet was the biggest thing for me as we’ve been leaking goals at an alarming rate previously so I was delighted we limited them to very few chances and just the 1 shot on target. We could have scored a lot more but to win 3-0 at home is a good result.

Last weekend his side were away in the cup to Whitstable Town, a game he isn’t reading too much into as he prepares for tonight’s fixture against FC Elmstead.

He said: “Very tough game, Whitstable have aspirations to get back in the Bostik league at the first attempt so it was always going to be tough. I thought overall we did well against a very good team and I certainly took some positives despite the result. As I said previously we’ve had a tough start fixture wise to the season but we’ve now got games coming up where I would expect us to take maximum points so that’s what we will be looking to do.”

“It should be a very good game but one I would expect us to win when we play FC Elmstead.”