Local derbies can throw up surprise results but there was no shock at Park View Road when Ebbsfleet United defeated Welling United. After the match, Fleet manager Dennis Kutrieb, expressed his feelings.

“I was happy with the boys, especially after we go one-nil down so early in the game.” He said. “As a manager, you always think oh, here we go again. You are the better side, you have a good start and then you go one-nil down and you start to think is it our day today or maybe not.

“But I feel very confident of the boys and I need to say, outstanding, every one of them because it’s not easy on this pitch. I need to apologise to our groundsman because I was talking to him last week to see if we can do something with our pitch to make it better but if I see this pitch, I need to apologise obviously. We have a very good pitch.”

“You can struggle on this pitch if you want to play football, if you want to be up for it and play football on the floor. You can see it took us nearly fifteen minutes before we were in the game and as I said I’m very proud of the boys because they showed some character. After you go one-nil down, you can easily lose this game if you don’t respond in the right way and it’s the reason I’m very happy today.”

Kutrieb knew that despite the league places, it would be a battle. He said “Even after (Welling were down) four-one, they tried to score goals, they tried to go forward. Obviously we could have done better, a few things, but at this stage of the season it’s just about winning and if you win four-one, five-one, four-two it doesn’t matter. For me as a manager it matters because you always want to have a good win by as much as possible and we had a couple of chances to score more goals.

“It’s not an easy place to come, even if they are bottom of the table, but they fight for their lives. That’s what you could see them putting a big shift in but we were the better side from the footballing point of view and also the better side from a fighting point of view and that’s what we need at the moment and that’s why I’m really happy today.”

There have been time this season where Kutrieb has felt that his team have not got all that they deserved from their performances. However, he felt that was not the case this time. “We got the reward today and I would say that it’s much deserved for the boys.” He beamed “They worked hard for ninety minutes. They didn’t stop after ten saying it’s a tough game for us and we’re 1-0 down. They kept believing, they kept working hard and you could see that things would come. When you don’t have anything left on the pitch you get the wins that you need and which you deserve and I think that it was a much deserved win.”

What happens elsewhere is not a concern for Kutrieb. “We don’t need to watch other results because we just need to make sure we get our results.” He said. “I don’t need to look at the table at the moment. We just need to make sure we win all our games. It’s not just win games. You need to make points, you need to win games.” 

Now comes the Easter period, so often make or break time for clubs. They start by hosting Dulwich Hamlet on Good Friday. “They are a really good side.” He said “They played a great game against us earlier this season. Obviously they’ve struggled a bit in the last weeks but there are many good players back from injury and they’ll definitely be up for it next Friday because if they want to be in the play-offs they need to get something out of the game and for us it’s very similar. 

“We got a good win today but we need to make sure that we win our games at home. Dulwich is not an easy game and then we need to go again on Monday away to Concord so it’s two big, big, massive games for us. We just need to recover now and then get ready for Dulwich and Concord two days later. It’s a crucial time for us with six games to go and we need to make sure that we’re ready for the Easter time.”

As far as absent players are concerned he said “Joe Martin’s coming back, that’s something we definitely know. I’m happy that (Alex) Finney didn’t get injured today because he was suffering lots of injuries but now he’s back. He played a good game for us today. You can see that he’s a massive player. 

“Shaq (Coulthirst) was back today and played a good game for sixty minutes or sixty-five minutes so it looks a little bit better. We will see with the other boys. There are a few boys not far away but I don’t know whether they’ll be ready for Friday or for Monday or for the upcoming games after the Easter time so we will see.”