Dover Athletic’s reward for becoming the first Non-League side to beat League opposition in this year’s Emirates FA Cup will be a trip to face either SKYBet League One side Peterborough United or League Two Stevenage Borough in Round Two.
Boss Andy Hessenthaler who didn’t make the trip to Chichester City for the draw instead told KSN of his thoughts for the replay and the eventual opponents for his side.
“With the replay at home, I fully expect Peterborough to beat Stevenage but then you never know in the FA Cup as we proved ourselves!”
“I am expecting Peterborough to go through, but we’ll see – it’ll be a tough game whoever eventually comes through. We’d have preferred a home tie of course, but as it’s away there will be no pressure on us – we can go there relaxed and enjoy the day, give everything again and you’ll never know!”
“The pressure will be on Peterborough or Stevenage and we can go there and let them be nervous of us after beating Southend. They’ll have us watched I’m sure – I’ll probably go to their replay – they’ll look at our away form and they should be wary of us and they won’t take us lightly I’m sure.”
“The carrot is massive – to try and get through to the Third Round. But they’ll be looking to do that themselves whoever we play. I’m sure that Darren (Ferguson – Peterborough boss) and Mark (Sampson, the Stevenage caretaker boss) are going to want to be in the hat for the Third Round for when the big boys come in – I’m sure Darren fancies a trip to Old Trafford, I know that we’d certainly like to play Man United.”
Naturally enough, the Dover boss admitted enjoying the celebrations after the game. “I had a couple of beers before watching the Liverpool Manchester City game and could reflect on our performance,” Hessenthaler told us.
“It wasn’t the case that we were fortunate to win as I think we did and really deserved more than the one goal that we eventually got which was a quality goal and was enough to win the game!”
It was of course the 80th minute introduction of Ruel Sotiriou that ultimately won the game for Dover. The boss admitted, “Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t,” laughed Hessenthaler.
“It was a tough call as we were doing OK but to be fair to Steven Rigg, he put in one hell of a shift like he always does and was looking tired and we had the options to freshen up at that stage. It was a tough call as to which one really as we had young Roberto Ratti who was eager to get on and obviously, we had Ruel from Leyton Orient.”
“He’d looked bright in training and so he got on and got the goal. I looked out for Roberto after the game and he was over the moon that we’d won and was happy with the call – fortunately for us it worked this week.”
It was a tough FA Cup baptism for new Southend boss Sol Campbell, and Hessenthaler had some sympathy for the former England international admitting, “ felt a little bit for him as he’s come in at a tough time as he hasn’t been able to bring in any of his own players and won’t be able to do so until January.”
“So, to draw us away from home in the FA Cup was probably the last thing that they would have wanted. They’re just lacking any confidence in their team as they got some very good players – when you’re not winning games and haven’t got that confidence and you could tell that on Sunday!”
“We’ve got a couple of games until the next round starting again with another telly game on Saturday against another former League side (Yeovil Town) so we’ll do our homework on them and aim to keep winning and the unbeaten run going until Second Round day!”
“We’re three games unbeaten with two clean sheets and we’ve got to try and keep that going now until the that game does indeed come along”.