The pain of Ebbsfleet’s play-off final defeat to Maidstone will drive Stuart Lewis on to even greater efforts this season.

Lewis was voted Fleet’s player-of-the-year in 2015/16 and only Danny Kedwell played more league games for Daryl McMahon’s side.

But his fine season individually was ruined on a collective level when Ebbsfleet, leading 2-1 with less than a minute to go, conceded a goal which cost them promotion.

Lewis was one of nine players inside his own penalty area as Fleet desperately tried to deal with Bobby-Joe Taylor’s 122nd-minute cross. He had a chance to clear the ball but it ping-ponged around until Dumebi Dumaka fired it past Nathan Ashmore.

Maidstone went on to win the penalty shoot-out.

Lewis said: "It was the biggest disappointment of my career. I’ve never felt like that after a game. It was how we lost and how the season had gone.

"It was painful and it took a few weeks and a lot of thinking to get over it.

"A few of us stayed together on the Saturday evening and you play out so many different scenarios, things we could have done.

"We could maybe have slowed the game down, all different situations we could have done to prevent that goal. It does eat away at you. To be on the receiving end of something that late is definitely hard to take."

But with his games-based contract rolling on to a second full season at Stonebridge Road, the 28-year-old has plenty of reasons to be cheerful.

Lewis said: "I’m over the moon to be staying and hopefully we can put it right.

"I loved every minute of last year. There’s a real connection with the fans and to win player-of-the-year showed me what they thought of how I played.

"There’s no way that if it was my choice, I would want to leave. It was a positive season for me. If you’d offered me playing 45-50 games and winning player-of-the-year, I think that’s a success.

"It’s something I’ll be looking to repeat this year. I want to put the hurt and pain of that afternoon to bed.

"When we’re away doing pre-season, the feeling we had on that Saturday afternoon will push me more than ever."

One thing which does irritate Lewis is the constant anti-Fleet sniping directed towards the club from outside.

He said: "I don’t know why certain people have to be obsessed about what we’re doing. I don’t understand the obsession with our failures and the way we carry ourselves.

"We don’t rub anything in anyone’s face. We’re a professional outfit, we’ve got class and dignity.

"I don’t think there’s any need to keep harping on about this Ebbsfleet bandwagon because we definitely don’t rub it in.

"All we want to be is an honest, hard-working club. The fans are, the manager is, Peter Varney, Dr Abdulla, everyone is and all this rubbish that gets spoken about us, it’s a joke."