Following Sittingbourne’s midweek home draw with Whitstable that saw them drop out of the Play Off places in Ryman One South, boss Jim Ward has challenged his players to be part of his squad for next season.

Despite taking the lead through Nick Treadwell’s diving header (which saw the midfielder led from the pitch with a dislocated shoulder), Danny Williams’ persistence earned Whitstable a point and left Ward a frustrated figure.

“The players now need to prove to me in the games that we’ve got left this season that they want to be part of my team next season, as between now and the end of April I’m going to be experimenting and looking to see what these guys can offer me. We had a little bit of a tinker tonight and wasn’t very impressed with what I saw,” a clearly fed up Ward explained.

“We knew how important the three points were for us tonight if we had any aspirations about getting into the top five – the three points were vital for us tonight.  We didn’t come up to the billing to be honest – I’m disappointed with performance that we put in against a team who basically just ran around.”

“They were full of young lads with a couple of experienced heads in there and I felt that we never dealt with it.  All around we were too deep – none on the midfield won their battles which was disappointing which meant the forwards got no service whatsoever.”

The Sittingbourne boss went on “I’m getting fed up with people telling me how well we’re doing – we’re here now and we’ve got our squad and in truth some of the players that we’ve got here should be doing better than they’re doing at the moment.”

“We’re carrying a few knocks (Nick Davis didn’t play tonight and Nick Treadwell’s gone off with a dislocated shoulder after scoring a great goal) but that’s two disappointing performances now on the trot.”

“We were poor at Merstham at the weekend and now tonight, I certainly thought that it was two points dropped and I don’t think we turned up properly.”

“It’s alright people saying that we’re doing alright and are going to finish up in the top half of the table but I’m not having that – I want to win every game of football that I play – but the performances on Saturday and again tonight just isn’t good enough, and I’d like to think that it’s not good enough for this football club either!”

“I accept that you go through good spells and you go through bad spells which is what we’re in at the moment, and the only way out of it is to work hard.  Our strikers both got away tonight and could have scored but didn’t and they’ve been scoring those goals getting us out of trouble – so perhaps its a bit of a false dawn if you like, but we’ll work hard and there’s enough character in the changing room to turn things around again but we all know that it will be hard work.”