Ramsgate boss Ben Smith wants to find a way to reach 100 points this season.

Rams regained top spot in Isthmian South East on Saturday after winning 5-0 at Three Bridges.

Josh Ajayi, Joe Taylor, Aaron Barnes and Jay Leader scored for the visitors, who also benefited from an own goal.

Victory moved them on to 62 points from 23 games and with 19 matches to go, a century looks achievable.

That might be what’s needed to win the league, too, with Rams locked in an intense title fight with Sittingbourne, while third-placed Margate shouldn’t be discounted.

Smith’s men are two points clear of the Brickies, who were in FA Trophy action at the weekend.

Rams finished runners-up with 89 points last season and Smith knows they might need to do even better to win the club’s first championship in 19 years.

He hopes their 2023/24 experience, when they were pipped by Cray Valley, will stand them in good stead.

“When you’re inside it, it’s hard to really look and say are we doing something different this year, have we taken things we’ve learnt from last year?” said Smith.

“We got the tag of bottlers and all that sort of stuff but when you get (nearly) 90 points it’s hard to say we need to improve this and we didn’t do this well enough or this well enough.

“Well, actually, we did a lot of things pretty well.

“When you don’t experience the success you want or feel you deserve, I guess you always go back to the drawing board and think, ‘Right, how can we be even better?’

“What we haven’t done this year is make lots of signings.

“We signed a lot of players during the season last year, at various stages.

“We haven’t done that, we’ve kept it relatively settled.

“Everyone’s calm, we’re just talking about the next game, and I think that’s the approach that gets you to 90 points.

“Can we add something else to get us to 100 points?

“It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen.

“We’ve still got some tough games to come but so has everyone else so it’s another exciting league season.

“It’s a positive time at the minute but we all know one result can turn things into a disaster.

“That’s the pressure we put on ourselves and that’s the pressure that being at a big club brings.

“You think when we lost to East Grinstead (Rams’ only league defeat), the world and his dog were interested in talking about it.

“It was, that’s it, we’re rubbish again, but we’ve put ourselves on a nice little run since then.

“There’s going to be other dips for us and everyone else.

“People expected us to go the whole season winning every game but it doesn’t work like that.

“The same goes for Sittingbourne and Margate, they’re going to drop points at times.

“We’ve just got to make sure we keep cracking on and not worry about the noise elsewhere.”

Ramsgate’s win at Three Bridges was their second 5-0 victory in three games, having beaten AFC Croydon by the same scoreline.

Those results sandwiched a 3-0 success over Deal, with Rams taking 10 points from 12 over Christmas and New Year having drawn 2-2 with Margate on Boxing Day.

“Player-for-player, AFC Croydon’s squad is as good as anyone in the league,” said Smith.

“We blew them away, we did a professional job against Deal and then another clinical job away at Three Bridges who I thought were the best footballing side we’ve played all season in terms of patterns of play.

“For modern football, they were great but they probably lacked a bit of experience to keep us out.

“It’s a weird one because the AFC Croydon game, we scored five but that flatters them massively. It should have been a lot more.

“The Three Bridges game probably flattered us a little bit on the balance of play. It wasn’t really a 5-0 game.

“But we’re in good form, good spirits and we’re ready for a big month.”

Ramsgate visit Broadbridge Heath this Saturday (3pm) and go to Littlehampton on Tuesday (7.45pm).

They’re potentially in the market for one more signing but won’t rush into anything.

“It would need to be someone exceptional that’s really going to push the boys,” said Smith.

“We’ve been close to a couple but it’s not quite worked out, so we’ll keep our powder dry and see what happens.”