Ashford United manager Craig Stone says the Nuts & Bolts owe Eastbourne Town after ‘horrendous’ performance in early-season meeting

Ashford United manager Craig Stone says his side owe Eastbourne Town one this weekend.

The Nuts & Bolts’ performance in a 1-0 away defeat last November was arguably the low point of their season.

Then-boss Lloyd Hume was fuming with the display and made no secret of his disappointment.

Stone succeeded Hume as manager within weeks, stepping up from his No.2 role, and overseeing a surge up the Isthmian South East table.

But they still have some demons to lay to rest as Eastbourne visit Homelands for the return fixture on Saturday (3pm).

“We were horrendous, absolutely horrendous, that day,” said Stone. “Lloyd was fuming.

“It was one of those games where you’re thinking ‘where are we going to go from here?’ because it was a really poor performance.

“There were poor individual performances and collectively it looked so disjointed, to the point that we looked broken.

“You do get those performances sometimes but we’ve turned a huge corner since then.

“We are a completely different outfit from where we were then to where we are now.

“We owe them one because when we went down there we were miles and miles off it.

“That’s in the back of the boys’ minds as well.”

Ashford will need to match Eastbourne’s work rate if they are to make amends this weekend.

But that’s been a theme of their form under Stone in moving away from the bottom four and into mid-table.

“Eastbourne might not have the biggest budget but what they have got is a group who will run hard and work hard for each other,” said Stone.

“But what I do know about our group now is they’ll match that and I see that in training.

“They’re enjoying it, they’re running around, they’re working hard, they’re driving each other and driving the standards for each other.

“They’re a