Player-boss Liam Friend reckons Herne Bay’s match this Saturday will be a good test of their Isthmian South East credentials.

Bay will return to league action when they host Merstham.

Jamie Decruz’s men were play-off semi-finalists last campaign and already find themselves in the higher echelons of the table this time around in seventh, three points behind fifth-placed Herne Bay with a game in hand on them.

Experienced defender Friend said: “They have managed to keep most of their squad together that came fifth last year.

“They have got some really good players. If we finish above Merstham at the end of this season, we’ll probably be where we want to be.

“It will be a good test of where we are.”

It’s been a mixed start to this season for Herne Bay - knocked out of the FA Cup and the FA Trophy at the first hurdles - but they hope to have found some rhythm after back-to-back league victories.

“It’s important,” said Friend on the need for consistency. “If you want to be a team looking up towards the top of the table, rather than towards the bottom, you cannot be ‘Win one, lose one’.

“We’ve only drawn once in the league so some teams have lost less than us but they’ve drawn too many and that’s why they’re behind us. That consistency is key.

“But it’s important to not be massively looking at the table at the moment.

"If you take out the Jersey Bulls game (a 4-0 home loss) - where we weren’t where we needed to be - it’s been quite a few weeks since we performed really badly.

“Hopefully, that doesn’t put the mockers on it! Against VCD (a 2-0 win last month), we weren’t amazing, but we did the basics well.

“One thing we have done well is we have generally bounced back from defeats this year.”

For the second weekend running, all the goals came in the first half as Friend’s team beat hosts Crowborough 3-1 on Saturday.

Midfielder Scott Heard’s first of the season, plus Zuriel Otseh-Taiwo and top scorer Kamani McFarlane, did the damage.

Friend reflected: “We’re really pleased with the result and really pleased with our performance.

“Crowborough had a good win the weekend before, beating Ashford. They’re a very dangerous team but I felt we stood up to their strengths well.

“It was more a case of when we would score next, rather than them scoring. We started well and put them under a lot of pressure, although we didn’t create as many chances as we perhaps should have.

“We scored but they literally replied instantly and we thought ‘Oh no, it’s one of those days’. But we then got two more before half-time.

“In the second half, they had a bit of a go but, apart from the first 10 minutes of the second half, it was still more us. We played well.

“We probably played a bit better than we did in the Beckenham game as well, which was positive.”

New additions James Jeffrey and Jared Williams, who can play in midfield and defence, came off the bench against Crowborough, the latter only introduced in injury time.

On striker Jeffrey, Friend said: “He came on up front and did well. He was a bit of a pain for the opposition.

“To be fair to Alfie Bloomfield, he ran himself into the ground but we needed to give him a bit of a rest.

“Jared has been training with us for about a month now. He’s coming back from a few years out of the game. He’s done really well in training.

“We were winding him up before the game, saying ‘You seem very nervous!’ He played it off - but I do think he actually was a bit.

“I’m sure Herne Bay fans will like him as a player when they get to see him on the pitch a bit more.”

Left-sided player Frankie Smith has left the club and signed for Faversham Town.

Herne Bay lost 3-0 at home to Maidstone in the Kent Senior Cup in midweek.

Bay visit VCD in the league on Tuesday.

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