Dean Rance was beaming on Sunday evening but he's already got his serious face back on as Ebbsfleet prepare to face Maidstone in Saturday's play-off final.

Rance was in the thick of the action as Fleet lost 2-1 at home to Whitehawk but won a penalty shootout to move within 90 minutes of the National League.

The tie finished 3-3 on aggregate before Fleet held their nerve to take the shootout 3-2.

Rance said: "We’re delighted. We’ll enjoy this but then we focus on next week because it is only half the job.

"Our target is to get promoted and this is only half the job, to get us to where we want to be.

"The weather didn’t help on Sunday. It was tough, scorching hot.

"There wasn’t a lot in it, they got the goal really early and the reaction from us was first-class to come back into the game straight away and press them back. We had a couple of good chances to maybe get the second goal but we didn’t get it.

"They came out second half and got another early goal.

"Credit to the boys for the last five minutes. they threw everything they had at us and once they didn’t score in that period, I don’t think they knew where they were going to get their goal from.

"You’ve got to stick together (in those moments), trust your team-mates to defend, to get that extra yard back when you’re tired and it’s hot. You trust your team-mates to recover for you and make that header in the box, make that block.

"Every team’s going to have a period in the game when they’re on top but it’s how you react to it. You’ve got to enjoy it, enjoy the defending part of it because we’re not going to have the ball all the time.

"When they’ve got it and when they’re on top, we’ve got to soak it up - and we did.

"We came out the other side and were unlucky not to get a couple of goals in extra time.

"We’re through, that’s the main thing. Regardless of the game, the main thing was just to get through to the final no matter how we did it.

"Next weekend, it’ll be an exciting game."