Manager Steve King has revealed he was well aware Deal were set to face Manchester United and Portugal midfielder Bruno Fernandes’ brother - not that his own players believed him!

The Hoops prepared for their inaugural Isthmian South East season as they saw off a Roffey team, captained by NHS worker Ricardo Fernandes, 4-0 in the FA Cup extra preliminary round last weekend.

Jamie Kennedy, brothers Tom Chapman and Ben Chapman, and young substitute Owen Wilkinson scored.

On facing Bruno’s big brother, King said: “I knew all about it. I was telling the boys - and they thought I was winding them up!

“I went to watch Roffey one Saturday when we had already played that Friday night.

“Ironically, in my original notes, I put down ‘Looks like Bruno Fernandes’. Then he scored the winner and it came up as ‘Ricardo Fernandes’ so I did some research.

“That was nice. I know some young fans enjoyed it and got a picture with him on Saturday.

“But we made sure that there’s going to be no story of him playing his brother in the later rounds of the FA Cup.”

A crowd of 567 watched the match at the Charles Sports Ground with the Hoops donating some of their funds to support Roffey player Kelvin Lucas, battling bowel and liver cancer.

“They were a nice club,” King explained. “One of their players is going through a serious illness so, as a club, we donated our 50-50 half-time money to that cause.”

Deal’s league campaign starts at home to Lancing on Saturday. They were thrashed 7-1 at the Hoops’ neighbours, Dover, at the weekend.

They are now being led by Jamie Hollis after a turbulent summer following last term’s sixth-placed finish.

But King said: “We had them watched at the weekend, which made sense because they were only at Dover.

“It’s a difficult one. They just missed out on the play-offs last year but they have lost a couple.

“Their topscorer (Lukas Franzen-Jones) went to Margate and some have followed their manager out the club. It’s very easy to say ‘They lost that, they lost that’ - but their friendlies have been against very strong outfits in Dover, Worthing, Hastings and Leatherhead.

“Our pre-season has been very different. But, if we had played Isthmian Premier club, we probably would not have started with eight from eight!

“We’re at home and we like to start at home with a win. But no one knows how we will get on.

“Everyone has their own opinion on how we will do, based on seeing us and knowing the league. But everyone thought Faversham would go down to SCEFL last season and win it by 15 or 20 points. It didn’t happen.

“No one knows - I’m the manager of the football club and I don’t know.

“We will go with the old cliche of one game at a time and see where it takes us.”

Deal’s FA Cup win over Roffey saw them earn £1,125.