Invicta midfielder reaches milestone

“I’ve been here for almost as long as Neil has but I’m not 50!,” joked Everitt. 

“He’s very supportive, he’s always concerned with how you are on the pitch and off the pitch and he’ll always be the first one to buy you a beer after the game.  He’s been great to me over the years.

“I’ve been here eight or nine years now and getting to 200 games is really nice and I said to Jimmy (Dryden) yesterday that I might beat his record, you never know. 

“I don’t really look at it from my point of view though, I look at it from the team’s and we’ve got to make sure we get results.  We take each game as it comes and we try as hard as possible to get the right result”. 

Invicta ended a run of defeats on Monday night against East Thurrock United in an enthralling 3-2 victory at the Buzzlines Stadium. 

Goals from Kevin Watson, Damian Abel and Steve Norman ensured that Folkestone took all three points against a side fielding three players who had recently left the Cheriton Road club.  

Reflecting on their win, Everitt said: “I think we deserved it over all, I think we were in control of the game apart from a mad five minutes when we conceded two when we shouldn’t have done, and we put ourselves under pressure. 

“I think we’ve been playing well before that though and I think we deserved to win at Ashford (Middlesex). 

“I thought we played quite well there and even though we were the away team, we dominated them.  It was more like us being the home team! 

“We just haven’t had the results really, we’ve worked hard and played well enough to win games and at least take points from them so it’s good to get that win under our belts.”

Worthing are another side who lie below Invicta in the Ryman Premier table and Everitt explained: “These are the teams who we’ve got to take points from, especially at home otherwise it gets tight down the wrong end of the table. 

“I’ve got every confidence we will be fine on Saturday and nothing else but three points will do. 
“We got five straight wins on the trot earlier on and we’ve got to do that again now and get on a bit of a run and we’ve got to stop conceding silly goals and we’ll be fine.” 

Invicta’s strong backline hasn’t shown on recent results and Micheal remarked: “I think it hasn’t been helped that we’ve been chopping and changing the team around recently. 

“When we was on that run we had a settled side and with a few of the lads going it hasn’t been easy and we’ve had to adjust. 

“Also players coming in have had to adjust to the pace of the game and that all takes time.  We work hard in training and Mark Patterson and Mark Saunders work hard with us and we know if we keep doing that the results will come.

“Because we’ve relied on our defence a lot these last few seasons its been easy for us to get a goal, tighten up at the back and win games 1-0 just like we did last year leading up to the Chester game. 

“I think it was something like eight clean sheets in twelve and now what we’ve got to do is score more as a team.  Not just the strikers – or Flan!  You’ve got him, Trig and Norms chipping in as well and us midfielders have got to try and score some as well,”   

Captain Adam Flanagan has scored six goals so far this season and Everitt praised the highly-rated defender.

He said:   “He’s so dangerous at set pieces and he’s really important for us.  He’s a class act, a quality player and I think he’s probably our best player. 

"The three of them (Trig, Norms and Flan), they are quality players and with them at the back you are confident you won’t concede too many games and I know that hasn’t been the case in last few games but that’s just one of them things.“

Micheal was also happy to put the record straight on rumours linking him with Ryman Division One side Dover Athletic, saying: “I’ve had quite a few people come up to me asking me about that recently and that I’ve been linked with Dover quite a lot. 

“There is no truth in it at all and I’ve never been approached by Dover.  I’m just concentrating on the season and getting results for us, I don’t think too much about other things like that. 

“I’m really good friends with Jimmy (Dryden) and we speak everyday and I’ll go and watch him if I haven’t got a game and he’ll come and watch me if he hasn’t got a game, and maybe that’s where these things start”. 

Michael Everitt captained the side last season, a role he occupied when he went on loan to Sittingbourne during the 2001/2002 football season. 

He recalled: “I had a bad knee injury at the time and we had players like Danny Chapman and Nicky Dent and we were top of the Premier for a time and so I wasn’t going to get back in the side as I hadn’t played in ages. 

“So I decided to go out on loan and play for Sittingbourne and I came back stronger.  Mark Beaney and Steve Nolan were in charge and they helped me a lot. 

“I could’ve stayed up there if I wanted but I decided to come back to prove myself and five years or so down the line I’m still here!”  

Micheal’s return to the Buzzlines Stadium came at a time when Cugley had just captured the signature of Scott Lindsey, an influential midfielder on and off the field of play. 

Everitt explained:  “Scotty helped me massively and made me a lot stronger mentally and I learnt lots off him.  He’s the sort of player who you knew what you were getting from; he’d never bottle a tackle, he’d always give it 100% whether it was in training or on the pitch – even singing on the back of the coach from an away game.”

Everitt led the Invicta team out onto the pitch at Chester City last season in the F.A Cup First Round, a moment he described as one of the proudest in his football career so far. 

He said: “It’s always nice to play for your hometown and obviously last year I was captain and it was something I done with a lot of pride, and leading the team out at Chester was quality for me and is probably the highlight of my time at the Club. 

“I’m an optimist and I thought when Flan put us ahead we could go on and win it and even at 1-1 I thought we could bring them back to our place”. 

He also pointed out as serious as it is taken by many people, football is only a game, something all fans will never forget after the tragic death of popular striker Paul Sykes only a few seasons ago. 

He said:  “What happened with Sykesy was massive and it’s one of the lowest times I’ve ever felt, especially in football.  It is a reminder that there is more to life than football and there are other things are a lot more important and it just shows at the end of the day football is just a game and when you leave football you go back to the real world.”

And Everitt’s aims for the season?  “To get my head down and to try and get a bit of form together because I haven’t been happy with it over the last several weeks. 

“I want to get myself fitter and I’m always looking to improve on my game, and we’ll go from there really.  I didn’t play as much as I wanted to last season because of a few injuries, particularly my ankle, so I take each game as it comes. 

“From the team’s point the last run we put together where we were probably sat just below mid table, we began to relax a bit and that started to show in our performances and results as our confidence grew. 

“I think if we can get a couple of wins together, the results should start to come in and we can then put pressure on other teams.”

Visit Folkestone Invicta’s website:  www.folkestoneinvicta.co.uk

Folkestone Invicta  v  Worthing
Ryman Premier League
Saturday 25^th November 2006
Kick Off 3:00pm
At Buzzlines Stadium, Cheriton Road, Folkestone