Maidstone United manager George Elokobi and Tonbridge Angels boss Jay Saunders look ahead to the New Year’s Day derby at the Gallagher Stadium

Maidstone and Tonbridge do it all again at the Gallagher Stadium on New Year’s Day.

The teams drew 1-1 at Longmead on Boxing Day in part one of their festive double-header.

United led through Matt Rush’s 57th-minute strike but Jordan Higgs’ magnificent injury-time volley saw the points shared.

Maidstone have already experienced back-to-back games against the same opposition this season, winning on successive weekends at Torquay in league and FA Cup.

So it’s nothing new to George Elokobi and his players as they set about landing a first National South win in four matches.

“It’s just another game,” said Stones boss Elokobi.

“We’re playing in front of our home crowd and we have to try and give a better performance to get the three points.

“We have to focus on ourselves. We’ve come here, away from home, and we’ve taken a point.

“So we now have to analyse, review and get back to working with our group in training to try and win the second game.

“It’s how the fixture list came out and we knew it was going to be like this at this time of the year.

“It’s important that we now focus on what we’ve done in the first game in terms of the positives and I think there were plenty out on the pitch from our group of players.”

It will be former Maidstone boss Jay Saunders’ first time in the away dugout at the Gallagher Stadium.

He felt the Boxing Day meeting lacked quality, while a small pitch at Whatman Way presents another challenge for a side who like to get the ball out wide.

“At the Gallagher, as I know more than most, it’s a lot smaller than our pitch,” said Saunders.

“It’s a tight pitch and we’ve got to go there and find a way to win.

“We like to get on the ball and make the pitch as big as we can and it’s difficult to do that