Herne Bay boss Ben Smith says he won't dwell on derby defeat at Faversham Town ahead of Isthmian South East game against Cray Valley

Manager Ben Smith spent little time dwelling on Herne Bay’s derby loss at Faversham.

Bay had beaten Town 2-0 already this month and hammered Lancing 6-1 last weekend, with hat-trick hero Zak Ansah, Rory Smith (2) and Bradley Schafer on target, but they came unstuck at Salters Lane on Tuesday.

It leaves Herne Bay sixth in Isthmian South East, just a point outside the play-offs.

But Smith wasn’t unduly concerned with the loss, ahead of another crucial match at home to fourth-placed Cray Valley this weekend.

He said: “There’s no sour grapes.

"I tell you what they battled, they fought, they deserved three points and you saw what it meant to them at the final whistle.

“That’s another mark of how far we have come as a club. It’s not that long ago Faversham wouldn’t have celebrated like that beating Herne Bay - it would have been the other way round.

“It’s one we have just got to put to one side and move on. You can’t dwell on it.

“In the past, I have been going mad in the dressing room afterwards. But literally, the de-brief after the game was a minute - if that! It was a case of ‘Right, that’s done and let’s move onto Saturday’ basically.

“We know what we have got to do to get into the play-offs. It’s another thing going and doing it.

“But we know what we have got to do, so dwelling on a game against Faversham, which is going to have no bearing at all on the game on Saturday against Cray, won’t help us.”

Sam Bewick scored the only goal for James Collins’ men.

Smith reflected: “It was always going to be a potential banana skin, and that’s what it proved to be.

“I said to quite a few people it was one of the hardest games that we have left (this season), and it certainly was.

“We beat them 10 days before very comfortably, but I