Margate No.2 Matt Longhurst says club could take some stopping if he and boss Jamie Coyle get things right ahead of first Isthmian South East home game of season against Crowborough Athletic

Assistant manager Matt Longhurst thinks Margate could take some stopping if he and boss Jamie Coyle get things right.

The pair take charge of their first competitive home match when they welcome Crowborough to Hartsdown Park this Saturday.

While Margate are plying their trade in Isthmian South East, they have been as high as National League South as recently as a decade ago.

“We want to get off to a good start in front of the home crowd,” said Longhurst after Margate drew 0-0 at Cray Valley last weekend.

“We had a really good following for our first away game on Saturday. We made sure we headed over to them after the game. We want the ground to be packed-out on Saturday.

“I’m doing a soccer school later this week and we’ve had a meet-the-manager evening, with myself and Coyley, this week. It gave us an opportunity to put across what we’re doing and how we want to do it.

“There’s lots of work to do, on and off the pitch, to get everybody going in the same direction.

“Once we do that, we can become unstoppable - a bit like Ramsgate or Chatham have been in recent years. If we do that, the club could take some stopping!

“It started off well but that was just the start on Saturday.”

Gate had to dig deep against Kevin Lisbie’s Millers as they lost midfielder Gibou Njie to a second bookable offence with 13 minutes left.

Longhurst, whose side were without versatile midfielder Lewis Chambers and defender Jake McIntyre, reflected: “They will certainly be one of the teams trying to get promoted.

“They have some experienced players for Step 3 - as well as for Step 4. We were the better team for the first 30 minutes.

“I felt Kev’s summary of it was fairly accurate. We went down to 10 men which, in that heat, certainly wasn’t ideal.

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