Dover Athletic head into their Buildbase FA Trophy tie with Havant & Waterlooville at Crabble this weekend with boss Andy Hessenthaler in great spirits following their recent run of results.
That, coupled with beating high flying AFC Fylde last week in which Dover not only came from behind to win, but did it with ten men, left the boss in a very good mood – albeit with a stinking cold – as he spoke to KSN this week.
“An excellent result especially when you consider that we went down to ten men as well,” he said.
“We weren’t particularly great first half, but we made a slight adjustment second half and it worked to a degree, but going down to ten men seemed to galvanise them even more. From being one nil down, we showed amazing character to come back and win 2-1 in that situation. I can’t praise the players enough as they were excellent.”
“We nearly even got out of the bottom four which shows how things are looking up, but I would have thought that there are now some teams beginning to look over their shoulders at us, the run we’re beginning to go on and long may that continue, but we’re not going to get carried away – we’re on a decent little run at the moment, but there’s a busy period coming up over Christmas – it’s nice to have a bit of momentum this time of year. All credit for the players who worked hard to get to where we are.”
Asked if the Trophy was now an unwanted distraction for Dover given their recent rival, Hessenthaler said, “I will admit that I would sooner have a League game Saturday to keep the momentum going, but it’s the FA Trophy – I’ve been involved in it down the years as a player and manager and have been beaten twice as a player when I was with Dartford, but we’ll certainly take things very seriously on Saturday.”
“We will use the opportunity to give some players who haven’t been playing some game time as we want to keep the mentality going and the run going as well and I’m sure Havant will probably be feeling the same.”
“It’s nice not having too many games at the moment. I have to say that when I was Eastleigh, I thought we had a lot of football to play for our League – I thought the amount of games we were playing was horrendous Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday week in, week out, I thought that training was a waste of time – indeed I think I actually said that it was a waste of time with the schedule that there was, as with squads that big, if you picked up any injuries it was asking a lot of the players.”
“Now it’s calmed down, it’s certainly helping with the squad, and the break, even though we’re training every day, has helped us, but we’ve been able to get more work done on organisation and the like. And so with games coming thick and fast now, we’re not going to have time to go through what we might like to and so having the gap Saturday to Saturday may well be a blessing in disguise.”
Hessenthaler then spoke about a new recruit at Crabble. “We’ve taken on the contract of Joe Bedford who’s a nineteen-year-old central midfielder from Southend. He’s been training with us for a few weeks and we’re going to take him on and will be involved on Saturday.”
“He’s got a bright future I believe, and we’ve liked what we’ve seen – he’s been at Southend since he was nine years old and hopefully, he’ll be a big part of what we’re trying to achieve. Scott Doe is the only one who is cup tied for the weekend as we look to continue the run albeit to be in the hat on Monday.”