Dover Athletic begin their campaign for the FA Cup with a trip to face National League South Weymouth with Andy Hessenthaler looking to take the Whites into the Competition “proper” again with some unfinished business to put right…

Last season, not long after Hessenthaler was reappointed Dover boss, the Whites were hammered five nil at now defunct Bury leaving the men from Crabble facing a long winter which in the end was a defiant battle against the drop.

But our conversation began with the Dover boss expressing his frustration at some of the reaction to the postponement of last weekends game at Barrow.

Dover’s train trip north last Saturday was delayed by a fatality on the line, but some of the social media comments and indeed comments made by the Cumbrian club has left Hessenthaler annoyed as he explained.

“It was frustrating as we got all the way to Crewe without playing the game! We were on a train to Lancaster where we had a coach booked. But after everything that happened, that was terminated at Crewe. And at that stage it was around two o’clock, and by the time we’d have organised another coach – ours was waiting for us at Lancaster which is about an hour and fifteen minutes from Barrow – from Crewe to Barrow has to be around three hours meaning we’re not getting there before five o’clock.”

“At that point the League intervened and called the game off. Tell me, do we really want to go to Barrow in midweek? Now we have to…”

He went on, “theres a lot been said about the game being called off by Barrow people. But you’ve got to remember that there was a fatality and that the club have been going by rail (according to the Chairman) for the last twenty years and never had a problem before.”

“There have been comments made from them, but for me they should worry about their own club and let us worry about our club. It got a little bit naughty – it got a little bit nasty – and certainly some of their fans were sending out tweets that were nasty.”

“There was a lot said that was uncalled for and they didn’t think about the person who lost their life. As far as I’m concerned what’s done is done. We weren’t the only team called off – Dagenham’s was called off and so was Sutton’s – we did everything in our power to get there and unfortunately things like this happen and we couldn’t play the game.”

Turning his attention to this weekend, Hessenthaler admitted, “We wanted to play last weekend to get the Aldershot performance out of our systems before we go to Weymouth in the FA Cup before we play two home games against Stockport and then Eastleigh on the Tuesday.”

“So, if we get back to back home wins, we’ll make up the gap (which is only three points) between the Play Off places and fourteenth where we are now after not playing.”

“I’m just looking to the Cup now and last year we had a tough one at Concord which we came through before getting comfortably beat at Bury. We’ve got another tough game at the weekend – the draw hasn’t been particularly kind to us with an away game against a good Weymouth side.”

“We had them watched last Saturday – they’ve got a lot of ex professionals in their team; they’ve a manager who works for Bournemouth Football Club who’s certainly got some players in from Bournemouth – a young team who will give us a tough game!”

“We’re obviously the team from the League above and they’re at home and are going well. Everyone will be thinking that there’s a banana skin there waiting for us potentially and so we’ve just got to make sure that we approach it the right way – like we did against Concord last year.”

“It’s a FA Cup game; it’s the best Cup competition in the World as far as I’m concerned so it’s massive for me and that’s what I’ll be emphasising to the players as well – they’ve been involved in it as well and we want to get through – we want a Cup run which helps financially as the prize money has increased we want a decent Cup run this year.”

“There’s a carrot maybe of a game at Gillingham and we all know what happened the last time when I was manager at Gillingham. But there are so many big clubs in there and that’s what we’ll be saying to the players before Saturday – make no mistake that if we’re out worked on Saturday, and that’s why we lost at Aldershot because we were out worked.”

“We’ve got to go there and find something extra as they will definitely find something extra because it’s a massive day for them…”