Dartford strengthened their place at the peak of the National League South with a destructive performance at Welling United leaving manager Steve King delighted.

“It’s not what I expected.” admitted Darts manager Steve King. “But we’ve been winning games and playing in spurts, opening teams up, hence why we’ve scored a lot of goals but that’s got to be near on the most perfect performance since I’ve been at the club. 

“Both halves, three goals in each half, and to be honest it could have been double figures. I wouldn’t be disrespectful to my old club but I’m talking about football on the day.”

They got off to a dream start as King explained. “We wanted a real strong start because if we’re going down the hill, we need to get in front early and we did so in thirty-eight seconds. We could have scored a couple more and some of our interlinking play, I think was a bit special.

“It was coming. I didn’t know who it was going to be against. We create a lot of chances. We are free flowing and our football, at times, is as good as any that I have ever been involved in. We look a threat all over the pitch.

He continued “I like to entertain. That’s always been my way. Even when I was at Welling we tried to get the crowd going with you and once they get going with you they can be that cliché of twelfth man. Our football warrants the support we get and we always try and please. It doesn’t always happen. Sometimes it’s for half a game, sometimes not at all but the ethos is there to go and have a go against everybody we play against.”

Despite having players missing, King wasn’t concerned as he has such a strong squad. He explained “Josh (Hill) was at a wedding today, Jake (Robinson)’s injured, Jebbie (Jack Jebb)’s injured. We’ve a rotating squad, rotating numbers, we pull people out we put people in and that’s the beauty of having twenty good players including two very good goalkeepers so that’s eighteen players that we can rotate that wouldn’t upset anything. We can take him out, put him in etcetera etcetera. That’s what we’ve managed to do.”

Once the game was over as a contest, King started rotating. He said “We rested Jordan Wynter, the right back, because he’s got a groin injury. We wanted to get him off early if we could and we were able to get to five-nil and take him off. Then we put a winger at right back.”

Although he enjoyed the performance, King felt no extra satisfaction over beating a former club. In fact it was probably to the contrary as he said “If you watched me, I didn’t really celebrate any of the goals which was hard because the way that we played was another level. I had a good time here for a year and I will never show disrespect to Welling United football club because when I was here the fans loved me. As a club, I respect the club because I really enjoyed my year here.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.