Hollands & Blair climbed up the table last weekend with an important win in their battle against the drop - but their manager won’t be complacent.

Darren Blackburn’s men beat bottom side Lydd Town 3-1 as, with second-bottom Lordswood also losing, they were able to put further distance between themselves and the bottom two in the Southern Counties East Premier Division.

Victory over Lydd came after back-to-back defeats against league leaders Faversham and Blackburn will be hoping they can start enjoying more wins in the weeks ahead.

He said: “We’ve pushed ourselves back up the table again into a more respectful position with games coming up that we can be more competitive in.

“We’ve just played Faversham twice and you can’t go into those games expecting to get anything, but you just hope you might get something and we didn’t.

“Now you’re looking at a run of games where you feel like we can compete and if we’re on our game, we can ask questions of teams and hopefully put a few more points on the board.

“We’ve still got to be conscious of [the teams below] because every team’s proven. You’ve got to be careful about some of these teams below us.

“Kennington have recently gone on a good run and Bearsted won 5-2 the other day. I know they lost last weekend but that’s a tough fixture at Fisher.

“All the teams around us are capable, everyone in that league can beat anyone on their day, so you’ve got to show respect and humility and go into every game with the same focus.”

Joe Thomas opened the scoring for Blair against Lydd on 32 minutes but it was all-square before the break after Ryan Philpott struck for the visitors.

Ade Batula restored Blair’s advantage from the penalty spot and Devonte West hit a third with 10 minutes left.

Blackburn felt the second half was a far better display than the first and admitted there were harsh words at the break.

He said: “We weren’t playing particularly well, managed to get ourselves in front and you think ‘things will settle down a little bit now, we’ll have a little bit more composure, be a little bit better with the ball’ but we didn’t do that. It became a bit of a tennis match most of the time, a little bit too open for my liking, and then we got a little bit sloppy.

“For the first time probably since I’ve been in charge I had to read the riot act a little bit at half-time, still trying to be constructive, and let the lads know what the expectations were.

“Certain things in the first half were just unacceptable at any level, and I told them so. I got a reaction in the second half, which is always nice to see.

“The lads went out and put some things right. Joe Thomas popped up on the left-wing, I’m not even sure what he was doing out there, to be honest, but he did really well, got to the byline, [and] a clumsy tackle led to a stonewall penalty.

“Lydd are always a threat, just because of the players that they’ve got, but we got a breakaway goal, Devonte did really well on the halfway line, a defender got too tight to him, he’s rolled him and gone through one-on-one and slipped under the keeper.”

Blair are at Holmesdale this Saturday. The Dalers’ last league game was the 5-2 loss against the Bears and last week they were beaten 2-1 by Division 1 side Forest Hill in the Challenge Cup.

They didn’t have a weekend game so could get in some scouting.

Blackburn said: “I think a few teams came down to watch and we gave the Kennington boys a clap afterwards, it was nice to see them and I think Andy Constable was around from Holmesdale as well.”

Blackburn’s made plenty of changes since taking over in November and said: “They’re a good bunch, they really are an honest group of lads and they’re in it together, which is great to see.

“It’s a group we’ve put together in the last few weeks and it’s like we’ve now come to the end of a pre-season.

“Now with the players we’ve got my expectations and the standards that we set are higher than they were when I took over.”