Whitstable Town manager Jamie Coyle remembers players smoking at half-time but it’s a different story these days

Whitstable boss Jamie Coyle has been struck by the level of professionalism in Southern Counties East this season.

Town are sixth in the Premier Division following Omotunmise Akanni’s injury-time winner in a 1-0 success at Kennington on Tuesday night.

Coyle was impressed with Ton and that goes for the league in general, with Step 5 football coming a long way over the years.

“The standard in terms of the coaching and management teams and the players is huge this year,” said Coyle.

“Last year, there’d be teams you’d turn up to and think we’re going to have a fairly easy game but that isn’t the case any more because everyone has improved massively.

“The quality of coaching and understanding of the game in this league is the highest it’s ever been.

“You go back and there was no analysis on the opposition and everyone’s now got the Veos (match footage) and data vests.

“Go back 15-20 years, there were people having fags at half-time at this level. I saw it with my own eyes when I first came into non-league at 17.

“The change in professionalism in the game is unbelievable and it’s all filtered down from higher levels.

“It’s good to test yourselves against the good coaches and managers and players in this league now.

“It’s going to be a real open, exciting season.”

Whitstable visit second-placed Holmesdale this Saturday (3pm).

They’re something of a surprise package but not to Coyle, who works with their management team and players in his day job running the education side of Welling United’s academy.

“What Holmesdale have done is employ two of the Welling academy coaches as first-team managers - Reece Parara and Simon Beard - and they’re basically playing all the academy players,” said Coyle.

“So they’re a young, energetic,