Hollands & Blair return to Southern Counties East Premier Division action against Fisher after beating Herne Bay in FA Cup shock

Hollands & Blair produced an early upset in the FA Cup after beating Herne Bay 1-0 in their extra preliminary round tie last Saturday.

Veteran striker Ian Draycott scored the winner to see off higher-league opposition, a week after their 1-0 victory over much-fancied Phoenix Sports in their first game of the Southern Counties East Premier Division campaign.

It’s been a superb start, but boss Darren Blackburn knows not to get carried away.

His team face another stern test on Saturday at a Fisher

side who have also claimed back-to-back league and cup wins.

“It’s been a good start but I’m not getting too excited,” said Blackburn.

“I’ve been in this position many times. You have a couple of good weeks but if you don’t keep your foot on the gas, you don’t keep your work rate up, you don’t keep the focus up, then with two or three bad weeks all of a sudden you go from being a hero to zero in football very quickly.

“We’ll just keep the players focused. We’re preparing for Fisher away next and we’ve got to put all our energy into that.”

Last Saturday’s win has been described as “one of the best results in the club’s history” with Blair pocketing more than £1,000 in prize money. They visit Knaphill next Saturday in the preliminary round.

“It was huge,” Blackburn said. “We had things going against us, players injured already, and then Kian Scott, our striker, who played up front in the first game against Phoenix and got man-of-the-match in that game, slipped off a jig at work and injured himself in his leg. He had stitches and phoned me on Friday to say he was out.

“We were short in attacking options and in terms of the threat we could pose it was going to be fairly limited. We knew we’d have to keep it really tight and