Ebbsfleet United midfielder Jack Powell on promotion and his England C call-up
Published: 07:00, 23 May 2017
Ebbsfleet's Jack Powell is ready to cap a brilliant season by joining up with the England C squad this weekend.
Powell, 23, helped Fleet get promoted to the National League and could now make his international debut for Paul Fairclough's non-league select XI.
The midfielder is joined in the squad by his club-mate Darren McQueen and Dartford's Keaton Wood, who was at Millwall with Powell. Maidstone defender Kevin Lokko is also in the squad.
Powell said: "I go to the England C camp on Friday, which I’m looking forward to. It’s the icing on the cake.
"The manager (Daryl McMahon) spoke to me and said 'you’ve come a long way in nine months; had a handful of League games and you’ve gone from someone who came in trying to impress to someone that’s played 39 games, scored a lot of goals, won promotion with the team and now finishing it off by playing with England C, which is the pinnacle of non-league football.'
"I’ve come a long way. Some people who don’t see football in the same way might look at it and think 'he’s gone from Millwall to Ebbsfleet, a drop of three leagues', but to me it’s a step up.
"I won promotion at the age of 23, I’ve been called up to England C and if you look at my goals and assists, my stats have been good this year and that’s what you want to do, you want to be effective."
Promotion is starting to sink in for Powell, especially when he looks ahead to who Ebbsfleet will be playing in 2017-18.
He said: "You look at that league and there’s untold teams that have got good histories.
"There are a lot of local games as well, which excites us. There’s Dagenham & Redbridge, Sutton, Bromley, Dover and Maidstone so we’re looking forward to them.
"We’re also looking forward to going to some nice stadiums and I think it’ll only help us.
"Our home form was brilliant last year and I think that’ll continue. We go into that league with a winning habit and we look to continue that.
"The away games are a lot bigger and better than they were this season and I think that plays to our advantage. We like to get the ball down and we’ll go to some nice grounds with nice pitches and I’m sure we’ll perform similar to how we have this season."
Powell came off the bench at half-time in the play-off final, taking Danny Kedwell's place after Anthony Cook had been sent off. Alongside Andy Drury and Sam Deering, he showed maturity on the ball as Fleet fought back from a goal down to beat Chelmsford 2-1.
He said: "We were buzzing and really pleased to get the job done but it was a weird one because, in a way, we were expected to win, we were the favourites. Every game we played, we were the favourites and under a lot of pressure.
"There was a lot of relief in there because having the season we had, in most other years we would have won the league.
"Having finished so far in front of the teams we played in the play-offs, we knew anything could happen and we just managed to get the wins we needed to go up.
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Steve Tervet