James Garland scored two tries as Whitstable kept their Kent 2 promotion hopes alive with a comfortable home win over Lordswood.

The performance was just the response player-coach Mal Graves asked for after successive defeats against promotion rivals Royal Bank of Scotland and Foots Cray had threatened to derail their challenge. With neither of their main rivals playing on Saturday, the Blues moved level on points with second-placed RBS, who host unbeaten leaders Old Gravesendians this weekend.

Whitstable make the short trip to Faversham (3.00pm) and Graves says they will be doing everything they can do to ensure the race for promotion goes to the final week.

He added: “All we can do is try to get as many points as we can from our final three matches and see where it takes us. We’ve been there or thereabouts for a long time now and the boys could not be giving me any more. We’ve probably not been as clinical as we could have been in some matches, which has cost us but we’ll keep going right to the end. If any of the other teams do slip up, we want to make sure we’re in a position to take advantage.”

Lordswood had pipped the Blues 8-7 in October but this time the Medway side had little answer to Whitstable’s backs who were well orchestrated by Marck Olive.

Olive has filled several different berths in the three-quarters but was switched to fly-half against Lordswood and capped an outstanding display by scoring the last of the six tries.

Graves said: “Lordswood were a big heavy side but we dealt with that side of it well. They are the sort of side who might have bullied us last season but it shows the progress the boys have made.We ran them pretty ragged and Marck had a good game. He looked comfortable with the ball in hand, he kept the backs moving and communicated well.”

Skipper Ben Cliff, Sam Holness and Luke Bowers were Whitstable’s other try scorers with Andrew Huey kicking five conversions.

The week after the Faversham game (April 1), Whitstable are without a fixture. They then host Greenwich (April 8) before a last-day trip to Old Gravesendians on April 22.

Match report credit - KM group