Margate play their first friendly this Saturday - but boss Reece Prestedge won’t be reading too much into the pre-season results.

Isthmian Premier Gate face Deal at Hartsdown Park. The Hoops finished third in the Southern Counties East Premier Division last term.

“It’s a good game to get you going,” said Prestedge. “Obviously, it’s local-ish.

“Training has been going really well. The fitness levels seem to be quite good from everyone at the moment.

“No one is going to be playing 90s [minutes] or anything like that straight away. They look as fit as they can for matches.

“After that, we have a game every Saturday and Tuesday, which is needed to get match fitness. Everything is coming back - the games and the fans.

“But I don’t look too much into pre-season, if I’m honest.

“A lot of it’s false but we will play to get what we want from it.”

Prestedge, whose troops face tenants Canterbury City on Tuesday, will be without certain players for some friendlies but has no complaints.

He said: “There’s a few games that certain people will miss. That’s why I’ve got eight or nine games so they’re not missing out on too much.

“At the end of the day, it’s pre-season so you cannot expect people to not miss games.”

Margate’s first friendlies will also give Prestedge and the rest of his staff an opportunity to look at some trialists, although one player who won’t feature will be winger James Bessey-Saldanha, who has revealed on Twitter he won’t be returning.

“We will have probably about four or five these first couple of games,” noted Prestedge, who has added a home friendly against Isthmian South East Sheppey on August 5 to their pre-season schedule.

“Then we’ll start cutting numbers from that.”

Sarah Higgs has stepped down from Gate’s board with immediate effect, having joined the board last May to help improve their commercial activity.