Ebbsfleet assistant boss David Kerslake has revealed they had to “shut the club down” this week due to a Covid outbreak.

The Fleet had a difficult build-up to their FA Cup third qualifying round tie with Faversham Town but came through 2-1 winners thanks to goals from Kwesi Appiah and Tom Dallison.

Ebbsfleet made eight changes from last weekend’s trip to Torquay, a match that the likes of Jake Hessenthaler missed due to illness.

“We’ve had a really strange week,” revealed Kerslake. “We’ve had an outbreak of Covid and had to shut the club down totally on Monday and Tuesday.

“Travelling to Torquay there were players not feeling well and they woke up last Saturday not feeling great. By Sunday, players were going down left, right and centre. We shut the club down Monday and Tuesday.

“Wednesday is our big coaching day when the gaffer does his team patterns and team work, and we only had 12 players to train. It’s been a really tough week.

“We’ve had one or two come back off injuries but there were players there that were breathing hard. It hasn’t been an ideal week but we got through it and we’re in the hat.

“It was whoever was fit and wasn’t suffering too much. In all fairness, Hess has been off nine or 10 days and he only started training on Wednesday so he’s not been great but he’s put in a hell of a performance.

“We’re hoping that we’re at the back of it. We played one or two that probably wouldn’t have (played normally) but they’ve got a free week now. We go again Monday and hopefully we’ll have a lot more (bodies) to coach this week than last week.”

Kerslake and boss Josh Wright watched Faversham in Isthmian South East action last midweek.

The lower-league side put up a fight despite going 2-0 down as both players who netted in Ebbsfleet’s opening-day win at Dagenham again found the target/

“It’s a great feeling to get through,” added Kerslake. “We knew Faversham were going to be a hard team to beat. We watched them at Broadbridge Heath and they’re well organised. They cause problems at set plays although the one they scored with came off the back of Kwesi.

“Any team with confidence can cause an upset. They’re unbeaten in their league, they’ve had seven games to get this far and are going great guns.

Read more: Ebbsfleet 2-1 Faversham match report

“There’s a real spirit about them and we said to our players that we’ve got to take the spirit out of them and not give them anything.

“We went 2-0 up and ended up conceding with the last kick of the first half so Tommy’s (Warrilow, Faversham manager) team talk was probably totally different.

“Even in the second half we should have scored a couple. Gio (Bellagambi) didn’t have too much to do but we’d have liked to have got the third goal and killed it off.”