Ahead of the SCEFL League Cup final on Friday, Erith Town moved four points clear in the race for the final Play off place on Tuesday with a hard fought 2-1 win over Holmesdale.

Whilst Friday’s League show piece and the final of the Kent Senior Trophy awaits his side, Dockers boss Adam Woodward is under no illusions that it’s a place in the play-offs that is 100 percent his target as the season enters its’ final month. 

After drying out as Tuesday’s game was played in torrential rain, Woodward told KSN, “As I talk to you now, the Cup finals are a massive distraction,” he admitted before adding, “but they are days out for the club and the people who work tirelessly behind the scenes.” 

“But for me as a manager, and I set my goals out and don’t hide from the fact that I don’t want to manage in Step Five, I want to be in Step Four, and we’ve got to get this Football Club into the Isthmian League and Step Four and if we get into the play-offs, we’ll have a chance of doing that.

“The Club is growing from strength to strength and the Cup Finals played that and Tuesday showed that, the players played as though they were distracted. We will just keep going and hopefully get ourselves into the top five.” 

The win over Holmesdale gave the Dockers a four-point cushion over sixth placed Whitstable Town. “Three points on Tuesday was all that mattered, another game to chalk off,” Woodward admitted.

“We’re now another three points closer to our objective. We rolled our sleeves up in tough conditions against a tough side to play against who threw a spanner in the works with their selection and formation.” 

“We’ve still got a lot of games to play, it’s three games in six days this week with one of them being a cup final. We have not had anything easy and because there’s an odd number of teams in the League, we’ve no game last game of the season, but we play Tuesday and Thursday beforehand.” 

Woodward then wanted to talk to address the potential problems and issues over abandoned games that still have not been “sorted” by the authorities.

He said: ”Some of these games involve teams who can still get in the play-offs, as such we still don’t know the outcome of the Lordswood vs Punjab game as Punjab are still in contention, same with Lydd and their game with Fisher, and then there was Snodland v Tunbridge Wells last weekend.”

“We don’t know what’s going on with these games and it would be nice if we knew instead of waiting and waiting and waiting, I really think that it should have been sorted out by now so teams know what they have to do and what’s going to happen.”

“We’ve got to keep going, we have set ourselves a target and a certain number of points and we have just got to try and get them as quickly as we can.” 

“The way the season is shaping up to the finish is really exciting, our objective is to get into the play-offs and if we do not is a disappointing season in my eyes and we have got to make sure that we keep going.”

“It’s great being in two cup finals, but that is not the objective, the objective must be the play-offs. It’s tight so we must keep winning our games; we have all got to play each other, which is good as well and it is going to be a case of who can hold their nerve the most.”