Manager Ray Turner hopes Faversham’s new-found defensive resilience will help the club deliver promotion through the play-offs.

Town sit second in Ryman League Division 1 South and can seal home advantage in the play-off semi-finals at the end of the month with a win against rock-bottom Horsham at Salters Lane on Saturday.

Town will be seeking a fifth straight clean sheet for keeper Rob French – who replaced the injured Simon Overland mid-season – following Saturday’s 1-0 success against Tooting & Mitcham and Monday’s stalemate in the Swale derby at Sittingbourne.

Surprisingly, having scored 102 goals in their first 40 league matches – which yielded an average of 3.8 goals per game in total – Town have now scored just once in their last three games, and coupled with the clean sheets, Turner joked: “We’re the bore draw specialists.”

He said: “This has not entirely happened by accident. We have wanted to tighten up at the back and be harder to beat and it’s nice to see it come to fruition. The players are learning all the time.

“It will be an important factor coming into a play-off battle. It will be a key factor and vitally important in deciding who goes up. We have three games to play and will be going for three more clean sheets.”

At the other end of the pitch, though, Turner is hoping for a return to their goalscoring form which had produced 19 goals in the six games before the barren run began.

He said: “Consistency is what has got us where we are. Horsham have a tiny bit of life left in them and it’s going to be a difficult game. We need to get our cutting edge back.”

Josh Stanford returns after missing the Easter weekend games.