Dover Athletic go into another home game this weekend with boss Andy Hessenthaler looking for his side to finally get their home campaign up and running as they welcome the oldest Club in the World to Crabble for the very first time.

Hessenthaler had hoped that perhaps the tide would have turned in front of the BT Sport cameras last week, but it was AFC Halifax Town who ran out 2-0 winners.

The Dover boss admitted, “When you’re on the television, it’s always nice to have people looking at us – especially away from home – and that we’ve carried the momentum on from last year where we came in and the position the club was in when we turned things around and finished the season really well.”

“People looked at us on the telly and we didn’t do ourselves justice certainly in the first half. Second half we came alive and what we’re about, but we can’t worry about that too much – we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves at home and get ourselves up and running the best way that we can. “All” we have to do is win a couple of games and that may settle a few people down then.”

“We had to do something as we felt at half time we were a bit flat and we needed to get a bit more width to the team and to be fair, Nassim (L’Ghoul) came onto the pitch and put Ricky (Modeste) wide and we started to dominate really – it was a positive response and I do believe that if we’d have got a goal, we would have probably gone on and won the game I think. We have to start scoring first as we keep conceding first at home and then other teams, what they do is to make it hard for us to break them down to the counter-attack.”

“That leads our fans to get a bit frustrated and it all comes on top of us and so we’ve got to be able to deal with that. But as a group we’ve spoken about it and I think it’s one of those – it’s a mental thing because that’s how football is, and the mental side of the game is important, and we’ve got to be able to handle the situation we’re in. Away from home, we do great, but at home we’re just finding it difficult at this present time!”

Reflecting on his side’s bizarre early season form, the Dover boss told us, “It’s crazy when you look at an away “table” where I think we’re five points clear, whilst in the home table we’re second from bottom I think it is… It’s very frustrating and everyone says about making your home ground a fortress, we’re certainly not doing that.”

“If you look at it and we’d have won two more games at home, we’d be sitting in top of the table now with Bromley! That’s the real frustrating thing about it – we are that close!”

“Do I want to be top of the table at this stage of the season? No not really – it would be nice – it’s always nice to look at that and that’s why we don’t get too carried away with the situation.”

“But that’s the frustrating thing about it – maybe a little bit higher – in terms of points tally we could have more than twenty-nine points if we could get our home form going. But we’ve just not got to panic with it; I’m sure it will change sooner rather than later.”

“We’re not far off – they haven’t been terrible performances but there have just been defining moments in a lot of the games, we just need a result at home to settle everyone down as the longer it goes on mentally it could cause a problem to the players and to me and my staff as we then start looking at ourselves obviously trying to fathom out the best way to turn things around!”

“It’s not terrible – it’s just that it keeps getting highlighted for how well we’re doing away from home!”

“We need to put it behind us by getting a win at home and maybe a draw away to settle things down as now everyone’s talking about that instead of our away form. But the next home game doesn’t come any easier as we’ve got Notts County on the weekend.”

“They’re probably the biggest club in the division and they really shouldn’t be in this League. I think they had a 9,000 gate the other week – I know that they reduced the prices, but it doesn’t matter and shows the fan base that they’ve got.”

“I’m sure that they’ll bring a few on Saturday – we shouldn’t be playing them, but they are in this League, but that shows how tough this League is this year. Who would have thought like a club like Notts County would be playing Dover in a League game a few years ago – it’s crazy really, but this is the reality it is, and it’s a great opportunity for us to get the home form up and running this weekend”

Hessenthaler finished with the update on his squad for the weekend. “Josh Passley and Oscar Gobern are still both looking like they’re going to miss the weekend.”