Dover Athletic welcome AFC Halifax Town to Crabble this weekend with boss Andy Hessenthaler ruing a return of one point out of six from the club’s last two games.
Hessenthaler told us this week, “We should really have won both our games this week – to be two nil up at Hartlepool and for the game to change on a major decision like the first penalty where our defender is two yards away from the guy and the referee gives handball – for me it’s never a penalty and I don’t believe that our guy could do any more, but it’s a huge game changer.”
“It gave their crowd a lift, but saying that, we should have managed the situation better and we talked about that on Monday. We know we’ve got to do better than that in the future – we’ve got ourselves in fantastic positions on three times now and we’ve lost the games at ninety plus minutes – it’s something that’s got to get better.”
“Tuesday against Boreham Wood was a similar situation when we got caught on the counter attack and again when we were attacking, we were our own worst enemy.”
“We’ve got to cut that out, but it was a good response Tuesday night and with the opportunities we created in the second half, we really should have gone on and won the game.”
“We want something to happen for us and get the rub of the green, but we got ourselves in positions to work their keeper, but we didn’t! Again, I couldn’t fault the boys with their performance but the pressure’s on and we have to be able to handle the situation.”
The Dover boss was quizzed on just who could still be involved in the relegation battle. “I think Barnet will be OK because of the games they have in hand,” he said, “but they can catch up on you if you don’t get the results, but you have to look up to Dagenham really I suppose as they still haven’t cracked the magical fifty points.”
“I know they’re only one win from it, but you can go on a losing run in this League so quickly and it can bite you! Halifax haven’t got to fifty yet, but they don’t give many goals away, but they don’t score many either – they’re able to stay in games and have a very good experienced unit and what they lack in pace they make up for in other areas.”
“It’s going to be another tough game where they’ll stay in the game and try to catch up out which is something we’ve struggled with recently.”
And then to the all-important Dover team news, “We’re all OK after the other night,” Hessenthaler admitted.
“We’ve got a couple who were fatigued but we’ve got to be careful as we’ve gone off the boil at home after a good spell before Christmas – we’ve got ourselves in great positions against Gateshead, against Harrogate and been in winning positions and thrown it away.”
“So, we’ve got to get back on track and it’s massively important between now and the end of the season when you’re looking at the home games, we’ve got starting Saturday and have to win the games now!”
“They’re all winnable games but when you’re desperate to win them things get a bit tense and nervous. So, we’ve got to overcome that as we’re capable of winning the home games and we should have won a number of games we haven’t.”
“I can’t fault the performances at home but it’s the results that we haven’t got that the performances deserved.”