Sheppey’s Kent Senior Trophy semi-final against Bearsted has all the makings of a classic.

The sides have scored 130 goals between them in Southern Counties East this season and meet at Holm Park this Saturday.

Home advantage makes the Ites favourites but manager Ernie Batten is taking nothing for granted as they bid to reach the final for the third time in five seasons.

“It’s two free-scoring teams,” said Batten, who led the Ites to penalty shoot-out glory against Ashford in the 2016 final.

“We’ve both got goalscorers so it could come down to who defends the best.

“We’ll go for it – that’s what we do – but we have improved quite considerably in the last few months defensively.

“We’ve worked really hard at that.

“I think people have us down as favourites but Bearsted are on a good run and they beat us 4-0 in the League Cup this season, although we did make a lot of changes that night.

“They’ve proved they can beat the top teams – they beat Beckenham recently – so we know we’ll have to be at our best to go through.”

Sheppey are fighting for promotion to the Isthmian League but the Kent Senior Trophy means a lot to Batten, whose side lost the 2018 final to Whitstable.

He said: “We’ll be playing our strongest team because we want to reach the final.

“It’s not like we’ve got two or three cups to worry about, this is the only one, and it’s a chance to get to the final.

“We’ve got a good record in the Trophy, we’ve been to a couple of finals in the last few years and if we get there again, we would take a large contingent to the Gallagher Stadium.

“It’s a good competition, quite a prestigious competition, and it would be good for the club to make another final.

“We’ve also been to the final of the League Cup, so this is a chance to make it four finals in five years, which would be a good achievement.”

Chris Edwards is close to returning from injury, Ian Batten is back in training and Billy Bennett returns from suspension but Dan Birch is still out.

Batten said: “We’re getting players back which helps for the league as well because we’ve got a busy run of games coming
up.

“We’ve suffered quite a few injuries and been able to overcome them with the strength of our squad.

“There can’t be many teams who could lose five or six key players and still be very strong.”

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