Benhall St Mary skipper Chris Sillett has hailed his in-form team-mates – the coastal team having one hand on the Division One title, ahead of today’s finale at promotion-chasing AFC Hoxne.

The Bob Coleman Cup finalists lead the way at the top of Division One by three points and, already promoted, should be crowned champions today – Carl Wilkins’ side boasting a plus-28 goal difference on second-top Sporting ‘87 – courtesy of their current eight-game winning run.

While it would take a swing of epic proportions for Sporting to overtake Benhall and win the league, the leaders will still be keen to play the strongest team possible, given Hoxne can still win promotion too.

“We have had a lot of games in the cups and people usually say they would prefer to have the points rather than the games in hand but I don’t think anyone expected us to win eight games on the trot,” said Sillett, who has 24 goals from 32 starts this season.

“The team seems to have clicked though and we don’t seem to have a weak link. There is a lot of unity in the team.

“We are all relatively local boys who know each other really well and we work well for each other.”

Two of the outstanding figures in Benhall’s journey to the top this season have been manager Wilkins and prolific forward Kelsey Trotter, the former Hadleigh United man having netted 47 times this season.

“Carl came in during the summer and has been fantastic,” Sillett added.

“He has only ever managed youth teams in the past but he has come in and got us playing football the right way and forged an excellent team spirit.”

On Trotter, Sillett added: “Kelsey has been brilliant and scored an absolute screamer at Wickham Market last week.

“He’s a fox in the box and he has even started scoring goals with his head which was something of a standing joke for a while.”

After tomorrow’s game, Benhall will then have the small matter of the Bob Coleman Cup final to play, against SIL Senior Division giants, Achilles.

“We won’t look forward to that yet as we want to try and win the league first,” said Sillett.

“Only a disaster would stop that happening but we want to win it in style.”