After seeing his side climbing off the bottom of the National League with Tuesday’s 3-1 win over Barnet at Crabble, Dover Athletic boss Andy Hessenthaler was in an upbeat, if cautious, mood ahead of another massive weekend for the club.
Hessenthaler and his side head West at the weekend to face Yeovil Town knowing that, after Tuesday’s triumph, successive wins for the first time this season would mean Dover would be just four points behind the Somerset side with two games in hand.
“I felt that Tuesday’s win was coming,” Hessenthaler admitted to KSN. “I felt at Wrexham the performance was good – mistakes cost us a couple of goals – but generally the performance was good.”
“Previous to that we got a good point against Boreham Wood; Dagenham on the telly when we went to ten men and lost one nil, I felt that the performances were coming, and the stats were showing that on the GPS – distance covered as a team – and they carried it on this week and we got our rewards.”
“It was a tremendous win in a big game,” he said, before adding, “but we’ve got another thirty big games to come, so we’re not getting too carried away. It’ll be nice to get a bit of consistency and that’s what we’ve got to do!”
“The uncertainty of everything that’s going on is still in the back of your mind. I spoke to the Chairman after the game and he said that it could be our last game.”
“Then we had the stuff coming out on Wednesday about tier three to tier six possibly being given grants to those that need them to perhaps carry on, but from my perspective, I’m still unsure what is actually going on.”
“The Chairman’s told me that there are more meetings so the uncertainty if we are going to finish the season is still there at the moment. All we can do is to keep preparing for Saturday until we get told otherwise – it’s a worry especially after the Chairman saying that Tuesday could have been our last game so let’s hope we get some positive news before the weekend.”
The recent suspension of the National Leagues North and South divisions has cast a big shadow over the National League itself continuing with ramifications being felt across the division.
“It doesn’t help,” admitted Hessenthaler, who went on, “It’s the not knowing really what’s going to happen next for us. It’s worrying and it’s got to be sorted – I still don’t understand half of what’s going on with the North and South shutting down for two weeks and we’re carrying on, but we’re all the “same” League, aren’t we?” he asked.
“I really don’t know personally what it will achieve in the North and the South as we’re all the same League!”
Dover will hopefully head to Yeovil on Saturday without an away league point so far but knowing that arguably they produced their best road performance of the season at Huish Park only to bow out of the Emirates FA Cup on penalties in Somerset back in October.
“We’ve got a good recent record down there,” the Dover boss said thoughtfully. “It has been a decent ground for us in terms of results recently, and they only played Wednesday (losing 4-2 at Maidenhead) – I watched the game. They’ve been having their own problems this year – they’re a massive club – but we’ve got to go there with a lot of confidence!”
“We went there in the Cup with a young team and we lost on penalties so I’m convinced that we can go there and get a bit of a run going. We went there and won a few years ago when we ended up staying up comfortably – it was the start of a bit of a run of consistent performances and that’s what we’ve got to do now!”
“Let’s hope we can get it all sorted and all continue to play on to the end of the season – let’s hope we can achieve our goal of staying in this division and we can all get through this really tough time with everything that’s been going on in the world and fingers crossed, who knows, some normality for next season!”