It was once, a long time ago, a regular destination for the Harriers but the last time we played there was in October 1985 and we lost 5-1. Games between the two sides were regularly played out from the end of World War II until the late 50's but then took a hiatus until 1980 when we started to meet up again. That all came to an end in 1986 when Dartford went down.
Now after twenty six years they're back. They got here last season, along with Champions Woking, by beating Basingstoke Town over two legs to meet up with Welling in the play off final. They achieved that with a 1-0 win and the only goal coming from star striker Lee Noble.
He's back for them tomorrow following a one game suspension after a sending off in their away defeat at Woking. He missed last Saturdays defeat at Macclesfield when an own goal from Tim Champion knocked them back a bit. Now he'll be hoping to set them up for their first win at home to fellow 'strugglers' the Harriers.
We'll have Steve Guinan back for us and not before time. Our strike force has plainly not been working with Ryan Rowe and Anthony Malbon too similar in style and the service they've been getting has been coming from the clouds and not to their feet.
Steve Burr has hopefully been working on this during the week and also on our hopeless defence. They somehow managed to throw away the lead twice at home to Mansfield on Saturday and the video evidence has shown massive errors leading to all three of the Stags goals.
We'll have to wait until Monday and the visit of Forest Green for the return of Lee Vaughan to the right back berth in place of Keith Briggs but until then Briggsy will deputise there if fit. He's picked up a bit of an ankle injury but treatment should put that right otherwise we're stumped.
James Vincent (groin) and Jack Byrne (heel) will also be last minute decisions but should have responded to treatment too.
The Darts only seem to have the one injury, to their first choice keeper Louis Wells. They've bought in a young lad on loan from Fulham and Marcus Bettinelli will be making his home debut against us.
This will be the best place to get our season started with, on paper, Dartford looking weaker than FGR and Barrow next weekend. We know the team should be more than capable of running out easy winners but team confidence will start to come into play the longer our run of defeats continue. We need a win very soon to get that confidence instilled once more and the sooner the better.
Teams:
Harriers from:
Lewis, N Vaughan, L Vaughan, Williams, Dunkley, Geohaghon, Austin, Demetriou, Byrne, Shakes, Storer, Vincent, Briggs, Pilkington, Guinan, Johnson, Malbon, Gittings, Rowe, Blissett.
Dartford from:
Ibrahim, Bettinelli, Porter, Arber, Bonner, Sawyer, Bradbrook, Champion, Monger, Rose, Rogers, Erskine, Burns, Harris, Hayes, Green, Noble, Wallis, Crawford, Collier.
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