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Ashford United face their biggest game for years on Friday night when they take on Horsham in the Bostik South East play-off final.
The Nuts & Bolts were backed by a large following in Monday’s semi-final at Hastings and plenty of fans are expected to head back to Sussex for the decider.
Lancing FC is the venue for the final and manager Tommy Warrilow is buoyant after United won a thriller 3-2 after extra time to get there.
Warrilow led Tonbridge to play-off glory eight years ago and knows what these big occasions are all about.
He said: “I’ve had both experiences, winning and losing, but the one thing I’ve never had is a boring play-off game.
“That (Hastings game) will be up there with Harrow at home, when we went to extra time, and I hope the same thing happens on Friday as it did against Lowestoft (when Tonbridge won 4-3 in the final).
“I wouldn’t want to go through the emotions we had on that day, though, we just want to come away with a result.
“I’m just glad we’ve got a four-day break for the lads. They’ve had four games in 10 days – and we’ve got to get there Friday night as well so that’s something I’m going to speak to the chairman about.”
Horsham will definitely be promoted if they win but a restructure of the non-league pyramid may conspire to keep Ashford down regardless of the result.
With only five of the seven play-off winners at Step 4 going up this season, points per game is being used to decide who misses out.
Warrilow said: “If we don’t go up after winning a play-off, the embarrassment should be with whoever organised whatever this is this year.
“I’ll just concentrate on winning it first. You can’t do any more than that. Let’s get there and see what happens.
“Nothing surprises me any more in football but how can you go through a whole season, win a play-off and not get promoted? It’s just ridiculous but the most important thing was to get to the final. Now we’re there, we’ve got win and see what happens. If we don’t go up, we’ve got a fantastic base to build on.”
He added: “I can’t even talk to players yet because I don’t know what league we’re in. We don’t know what sort of budget we’re looking at, we don’t know anything so regarding retaining players and who we’re going to bring in, we go to the last Friday of the season and I don’t know what league we’re in. But this is a nice situation to be in.”
Lee Prescott is available after suspension while Ashford hope Jay May, Trey Williams and Jake McIntyre will all be fit enough to feature.
Kick-off is at 7.30pm.
