CANVEY Island manager Danny Heale is confident his side can still progress into the third qualifying round of the FA Cup.

The Gulls will replay with St Neots Town tomorrow night after the two teams drew 2-2 in their first meeting at Park Lane on Saturday.

But Heale is convinced Canvey can still progress in the competition.

“I’m massively confident that we can win the replay — just as long as we play like we did on Saturday,” said Heale.

“For the first 10 or 15 minutes I thought we were very poor at the weekend but we had a long journey back from Leiston in the week, whereas St Neots didn’t have a game.

“After that opening spell, I thought we were by far the better team but we conceded a couple of sloppy goals and that hurt us.

“One was from a corner, the other a counter-attack and we really had to go for it at the end.

“We got the goal we wanted and definitely deserved but we couldn’t quite follow that up with the winner, so hopefully that will come in the replay because it would be nice to advance in the competition.”

St Neots, who are 16th in Calor League Premier, took an early lead when Lewis Hilliard’s powerful left-footed shot flew past Canvey goalkeeper Josh Vickers.

But the home side equalised in the 19th minute when Ashley Dumas was on hand to fire home the rebound after Mike Jones’ penalty had been kept out by visiting shot-stopper Niall Conroy.

Canvey pushed hard to go in front and dominated the majority of the second half.

However, it was the visitors who went back in front in the 74th minute when Edward Adije’s shot deflected past Vickers.

Canvey reacted well to the setback though and equalised eight minutes from time when Spencer Belotti controlled the ball brilliantly before slotting home.