Neil Cugley hailed Folkestone's 1-0 win over Hastings on Tuesday night as "massive" after his team maintained their four-point lead at the top of Ryman League Division 1 South.

A third-minute Ronnie Dolan goal earned Invicta a second win over their title rivals in the space of 15 days and extended their unbeaten start to the season.

Folkestone have taken 22 of a possible 24 points and the significance of this result wasn't lost on their manager.

Cugley said: "It was a massive win for us.

"Hastings showed in the first half why they should be one of those teams that won’t be far away. They were good first half and it needed us to shift what we were doing.

"It’s not the sort of thing we’re renowned for. We’ve had to dig in, without people like Micheal Everitt, who were so good at that. We did a great job.

"It’s big because to beat them twice early on, it means they’ve got a lot of catching up to do. Hopefully we can show that we’ve got a good enough side not to lose too many games between now and the end of the year.

"We have, over the years, always got better as the year’s gone on, as the pitches get a bit more life in them and you’re pinging it about a bit more. Hopefully that’ll be the case again."

Folkestone are now 10 points clear of Hastings and this win was all the more impressive given the fact they had to play for a quarter of the game with only 10 men.

Club captain Liam Friend was shown a straight red card for pushing his head towards Jack Walder after the Hastings skipper had taken out Phil Starkey with an ugly late tackle.

Cugley said: "I know I’m going to sound like Arsene Wenger but I didn’t see it.

"I just thought their bloke was being sent off. I thought 'that’s alright, they’ve gone down to 10 and we’ll win 1-0' but he’s apologised.

"It’s a shame because he’s such a good lad, Friendy.

"I didn’t see it – I was like a lot of people, I thought their bloke had got sent off for the tackle.

"If Friendy’s reacted like that, he just can’t do it I’m afraid.

"But I think it’s very harsh when someone gets three games for not really doing too much."

Folkestone came under pressure after taking the lead and goalkeeper Tim Roberts saved a penalty just before the interval.

Cugley said: "I thought they were better than us in the first half. We changed it round and we pushed (James) Rogers onto their right-back, who I thought was excellent.

"Everything they did came from their right-back in the first half.

"The message at half-time was stop the right-back getting it, simple as that. He was the outlet and they were trying to hit a lot of diagonal balls to Zac Attwood, to get onto JV, because he’s good in the air.

"But I think JV did a great job and we stopped the right-back getting forward. As soon as he stopped getting forward, I thought we played really well for 20 minutes in the second half.

"I think it’s the best we’ve played but of course then we had the sending-off and he started getting out again a little bit.

"We showed a side of us that we don’t have to show often, digging in and everybody had a go."