Kingstonian swept to an entertaining 4-1 victory over Folkestone on Saturday - and the push for promotion starts now, according to striker Louie Theophanous who scored two critical goals to lift his side to 14th in the table.

“I think the balance is right now”, said the 26-year-old former Billericay and Woking man. “I don’t look at the points at this stage. Folkestone are always up there in the playoffs so today was a big performance. And we’ve still got Leo [Chambers] and Andrew [Musungu] to come back.”

Theophanous credited the arrival of new first-team coach Jamie Lawrence with improving the team’s fortunes after a poor start.

“When Jamie came in two weeks ago, there was just a complete shift in the mentality of all of us, we just all realised there couldn’t be any complacency. The intensity of the training … the first session he took, I think after 20 minutes we were all dripping in sweat and our lungs were in pieces, we were just like ‘this is how we need to train to get everyone at it’. And I think the performance today showed that. We’re all at the races now, we’ll go on a good run now, I believe that.”

Theophanous, who was playing two steps higher in the National League season, opened the scoring in the first-half, converting a flick-on from a corner at close range.

Just as it looked like dominant K’s were going to ease to victory, a second-half concussion to goalkeeper Rob Tolfrey meant defender Sean Francis had to come on between the posts. Folkestone sensed an opportunity, sent in some speculative crosses and soon equalised on the hour through Jack Evans.

But the home side kept on pressing forward in the driving rain, with Shaun McAuley and Aaron Lamont superb in midfield. In the 65th minute, another swift passing move ended with winger David Fitzpatrick crossing to the backpost to Theophanous, who showed great technique to volley the high ball down and into the corner of the net.

Elliott Buchanan and on-loan Palace youngster James Daly then rounded off the scoring late on to complete K’s best performance of the season.

K’s head to in-form Worthing on Saturday.