There was an end to Dartford’s one hundred percent start to the season when they suffered a local derby Isthmian League Premier Division defeat at the hands of Welling United. After the match, Dartford manager Ben Greenhalgh gave his thoughts.

“We lost the game management in the first half.” he said. “I think there were moments in the game that could have swung our way and didn’t and then we’ve still got to defend the goal. I think we could have been down the other end getting a penalty. The moment where we lost Joe Tennent was huge for us, a possible broken jaw which is never nice.”

“We can moan, we can complain about certain situations in the first half but we still conceded a goal that we should have dealt with better. It’s a ball into the box and we should have been the ones winning it. In the end they’ve won it and they’ve won the second ball and they’ve scored the goal.”

“It’s a great time for them to score a goal and I think we got too eager in the second half. We pushed too much too early. We made two uncharacteristic errors from us and we gifted goals.”

For the Tennent issue, Greenhalgh admitted that the referee didn’t see it. “The ref was with me.” he confirmed.

“He was running the other way expecting us to put it a little further up the pitch but Joe’s turned out, which we wanted to get on the ball a little bit more and then it’s happened but there’s three officials there. You’ve got the one on the other side looking the whole way down and you’ve got the one on this side who probably has the best view.”

“I’m not one standing on the pitch saying ref you’ve got to send him off but I’m more about duty of care for our player. I’m not saying it needs to be a red card but the fact that we’ve lost a player, that’s the problem. We’ve lost Joe Tennent, we’ve had to change things up, and it had a big effect.”

Although the result went against his team, they are in a good position early in the season. Greenhalgh confirmed: “When you look at it we’ve started brilliantly, we’ve both got nine points. I’m just disappointed that it’s a loss at home and when you’re playing against Welling you don’t want to have that on your record.”

“It’s good to know and it’s good to learn from these things but we’ve just got to make sure that we do learn. They’ve now got a better goal difference than us. It’s not been a bad start but that’s a performance that we need to react from and get right and have a strong bank holiday weekend.”