Dover Athletic finally know the who, what and where of their new season following the announcement of the National League fixtures.
The announcement has left boss Andy Hessenthaler and his look side facing a tough start, beaten Play Off Finalists from last season Notts County at Crabble, albeit still not for another three weeks.
Hessenthaler told us, “It’s a tough start and a tough finish too, but we’ve got to play everyone at some stage.
“I’m not worried about the start to be fair, the finish is going to be a real test for us and we’ve got to make sure that we’re in a position that we haven’t got to go to Hartlepool to get something to stay in the division because that’s what we’ve got to do this year, stay in the division.
“Everyone knows our position; the Chairman’s gone public on that and we’ve got to do a lot of work over the pre-season in terms of players and getting ourselves organised.
“One thing I would say is that we’re going to be a very young team this year, we’ve already worked out that our average age is going to be about twenty-three in the squad. So its going to be a tough year from us, a big challenge but we’re all up for it and we’ve got to work hard in the next three and a half weeks to make sure that we’re ready for Notts County at home.”
“It probably is a good time to play County as it does take a while, people talk about ten games to settle in and get going and people start looking at the table, so it may well be a good time to play them in the first game.
“We’re still not sure on the crowd situation, I believe at the moment in our League its just going to be home fans and no away fans. You never know that may help us as well, but when you look at them and compare them to ourselves, they’re a huge club when you’re looking at us and what we’ve had to do.
“We’ve got no training ground at the moment and we’re training on the pitch that isn’t doing that any good. We’ve got a lot of hurdles to get over but it’s nobody’s fault, the pandemic has come along and the Chairman’s been honest; we’ve got to try and get a group of players together with no expectations on us this year other than trying to stay in the division the best way we can!”
“It’s going to be a strange season but everybody is the same… Football still seems strange at the moment, some Leagues have started this week but we don’t start until October 3rd, it just doesn’t seem right for some reason, but the situation has put us in this strange place but we’re still three and a half weeks away from our first game!
“We’re working towards it, we had a friendly in midweek which was disappointing (a three-one defeat at Herne Bay) but to be fair to them, they’re a good side and play in the FA Cup this weekend and have been up and running for a few weeks and you could tell.
“We’re not ready yet and are still playing trialists and swapping things around trying to get minutes into players legs so we’re still a little bit disorganised in that but come the third of October, we’ll be organised, we’ll be ready and have a team out there to go and get us off to a good start.”
We then asked the Dover boss why he still has to wait nearly another month before kicking a competitive ball, he told us, “the only reason that I can think of after talking to the Chairman is that they’re doing it because I think Boris made a statement that we could have fans back in the stadiums the first week of October.
“So it feels as if they’ve delayed it until then because the National League have got to have fans back in. But it just seems strange especially when we had not a bad crowd at Herne Bay in midweek, why can’t we have a percentage of the crowds in and start this Saturday like so many others.
“I know that the Premier League and the EFL aren’t having crowds in at the moment, but there just seems an in balance at the moment with what’s being done, it seems like there is one rule for one thing and then another thing, it’s just strange to me but no one has really given us an explanation as to why we’re starting this late; it is what it is and we’ve got to prepare for that.”