Boxing Day defeat to Welling United at their Park View Road ground ended Dartford’s good recent run on the road.

Joint Dartford manager Adam Flanagan had few complaints about the outcome. He said “I felt the first half was quite a scrappy affair. I think there were few chances but those chances that did come along went to Welling. We wanted to keep it tight. We didn’t want to come here and be too open. We wanted to stay in the game and be difficult to break down.

“To be fair, I felt there wasn’t much quality from both teams apart from the header for the goal. That raised Welling and we came in at half time at one nil and thought that we would be able to impose ourselves more downhill than we did in the first half.”

Although Dartford produced a little more after the break, Flanagan admitted “I think in the first half we didn’t have any shots on target at all. There wasn’t an abundance of chances for either team.

“In the second half I had us down as two on target and six off target which suggests that we offered a little more going forward but I don’t think we dealt with them. They performed really well and caused our young centre half, Ronnie Vint, a lot of problems.”

However, Dartford remained in the game all the time that there was only one goal in it, and Flanagan was disappointed with the way the crucial second goal was conceded. “I thought the second goal was quite soft.” He said. “(John Paul) Kissock’s done really well. He’s driven into the box and he’s put a cross in and I’m not too sure that Bailey (Vose) needs to parry that really.

“I think maybe he can stop that but it’s fallen to Danny (Mills) and Danny’s put it in. It gave us a mountain to climb. I still felt the players really kept going until the end but without really testing (Dan) Wilks or making him have to pull a top drawer save out of the bag.”

One player who did draw praise out of Flanagan was substitute Andre Coker who did ask questions of the Welling defence. “I thought Andre was really positive when he came on. He looked like he wanted to get at people and go by people and when he drove and had that (injury time) shot (that came back out off the upright) that was the closest that we came to scoring in the day.”

After the game Flanagan addressed the players in the changing room. He continued “I said that if you break the eleven down, Welling had more players that won their individual battles than we did and when it comes to derby games you need every player to win their individual battles to have a chance of winning.

“I’m disappointed on that front but we have the opportunity to play Welling again in six days. We’ve got a game on Saturday where we’ll try and bounce back and it’s just about trying to get momentum now. A good performance is needed on Saturday at East Thurrock and then if we can get that and get a positive outcome, we’ll be in a better place for the reverse fixture.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.