Hollands & Blair chairman Paul Piggott will remain in charge of the first team for as long as it takes to find their next manager.

Blair axed Luke Jessup last week after finding themselves in the lower reaches of the SCEFL Premier Division, having started the new season with much hope of challenging at the top end.

Piggott stepped in as caretaker to face the bottom side Rusthall, and his team ended up playing the final 30 minutes with nine men, following two red cards. They held onto their 2-0 lead for an important three points.

It wasn’t the kind of weekend Piggott has been planning, but the board felt they had to act after a tough opening two months of the season, issuing a statement last Wednesday saying they had “come to a difficult decision to move the club in a new direction.”

In the interim, club chairman Piggott has stepped up to manage, with injured first-team players Dan Ellis and Louis Valencia assisting and managers of their u18s and u23s helping with the coaching.

Piggott, who has previously managed at Chatham and last had a caretaker stint at Blair in March 2019, said: “You watch the Arsenal-Man City game the week before, watching what Arsenal did (trying to hang on after a sending off) for as long as they did, then a week later you find yourself in the dugout having to do exactly the same!”

First-half goals from Charlie Sheringham and David Chandler had put Blair in charge against Rusthall but Elbie Boichat was sent off on 55 minutes for a second bookable offence and Charlie Wright was also dismissed for two yellow cards 10 minutes later.

The club have received plenty of applications for the manager’s job but Piggott was concentrating on the weekend game first. The board were due to meet this week to put together a list of potential candidates and a strategy going forward.

He said: “Once we released Luke, I agreed to do it with a couple of experienced players, we have got some good people in the club who can carry us through in this time.

“The situation is temporary, we will have a chat to decide where we want to go forward as a club. We advertised the position and have had 20-plus applicants, all of whom have played or managed at this level, at least, so we’ve got a good calibre of people come in for the job.

“I just wanted to get the weekend out of the way, so couldn’t see past that.

“We will now compile a list and have a chat about what direction we want to go, the structure of the club, but we have a great system here which we have worked hard to build up.

“We’ll come up with a plan and if that takes a week, a month, so be it, we haven’t put a time-scale on it. We feel as a group we can carry the club through, however long that may be, we can deal with it, we have people we can trust and give their all.

“Because of the people we have at the club we don’t need to rush.

“We have a lot of talking and thinking to do. We are happy to it in the interim, but we will have a meeting, build a plan and see who best fits that plan for us.”

The club have worked hard to build up their youth section and a path to the first team while they also work in partnership with the Soccer Elite Football Academy, who own the ground.

Blair have lost a handful of players since Jessup departed, which meant Piggott couldn’t put a squad together until the day before their weekend match.

He said: “I named on squad on Friday morning, it was a bit of a patch-up, we got ourselves into a good position in the game, 2-0 up and looking okay.

“Rusthall caused us one or two problems in the middle of the park, playing a system that we didn’t cope with for a few minutes but we got to grip with it and into a good position, but then when we went down to nine men, that’s exactly what they were, nine men.

“They just grew in stature, defended for their lives and it was unbelievable to watch, those nine men willing to put their bodies on the line and work hard to keep the three points.”

Blair are away to Bearsted this Saturday and return home the following week to play Holmesdale in the Kent Senior Trophy first round.