Lowestoft Town Football Club 2012- 2013 season. Craig Fleming Picture: James Bass

Lowestoft Town director of football Craig Fleming has challenged his players to maintain their recent impressive form over the busy festive period.

After taking 10 points out of the last 12 available, the Blues have catapulted themselves right back in the promotion race ahead of tomorrow’s visit of league leaders Margate to Crown Meadow.

But Fleming wants his side to build on their recent run and ensure the Blues have the best platform possible to kick on in 2013.

“It’s up to us to keep doing what we have been doing recently,” he said. “This isn’t the time to sit back and admire what we’ve done – we want to do more. Our form over the festive period in recent seasons hasn’t been great but hopefully our season’s blip is out of the way and we can really kick on over Christmas and in the new year.”

Lowestoft ground out a 2-0 win at East Thurrock last weekend although Fleming admitted he feared the worst when Michael Frew was sent off early on with the score still at 0-0.

A moment of madness from Thurrock’s Kris Newby before half-time made it 10 against 10 after punching Jack Defty and Fleming believes this was the turning point.

“I thought ‘here we go again’ because we’ve already had to play on a few occasions this season with 10 men,” added Fleming. “But then one of their players has had a brain freeze and really done us a favour. He’s punched big Jack to give us a penalty and it’s 10 against 10. Suddenly it was a very different game.

“I think Frewy can count himself unlucky to see red – I genuinely think it was no worse than a yellow card. He was a little bit late on their player and a yellow card probably would have been about right. But we’ve managed to adjust and to come away with the points was the most important thing.”

Lowestoft have no new injury worries ahead of Margate tomorrow although Dan Gleeson (back), Greg Crane (ankle) and Adam Smith (shin) remain sidelined. The Blues will be on a revenge mission after being beaten by the leaders earlier this season.

“It’s a cracking game – they are going very well but so are we,” said Fleming. “Hopefully we can build on what we’ve been doing recently.”

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