HESS LEFT SO PROUD AS WHITES BATTLE ON
ANDY HESSENTHALER feels, morally, football should be taking a back seat during the pandemic – but his fast improving Dover Athletic side are determined to make the most of the time that football has left.
Hessenthaler’s Whites appear to have turned the corner after a disjointed start to the season and moved off the bottom of the table on Tuesday night with an impressive 3-1 win over Barnet.
Last Saturday, Dover more than held their own against a play-off chasing Solihull Moors side despite fielding a team with an average age of just 22.
And Hessenthaler believes that if the Whites can maintain their National League status for next season – through performances on the field or otherwise – then the future looks bright on the Kent coast.
In the meantime, though, Hessenthaler believes there is a more moral issue at stake – and says football needs to look at the bigger picture.
“I want us to carry on, of course I do, but morally, I just don’t think it should,” the former Gillingham, Leyton Orient and Eastleigh boss told The NLP.
“I understand it, of course, and no-one loves football more than me, it’s my life, but with what’s going on at the moment, the thousands of people losing their lives, it just doesn’t feel right that we are worried about a game of football.
“People are bound to say that’s because of where we are in the table. Yes, if the season was to finish now then it does do us a favour because of our league position, whereas the teams at the top would be arguing that we should carry on. Everyone has their own agenda, but it just feels wrong to me.”
Dover’s win on Tuesday night was only their third of the season, but Hessenthaler believes it was reward for their persistence during an unsettling campaign.
“I felt a result like that was coming,” the 55-year-old said. “We’ve been playing some good football and work rate is not an issue, our Achilles heel is individual errors, which tends to happen with such a young team.
“I told the boys that if they keep working hard then we will win football matches and it was great that it came against Barnet – a very difficult game on a very difficult pitch. The referee did well to get the game on.
“Naturally, we are very disappointed with our league position, but it’s not been a normal season for us. We lost 14 senior players in the summer and the chairman was up front in telling us before the season that we had to make significant cuts.
“We brought in a lot of younger players, from academies and 23s football and just when it was starting to come together, Covid arrived again.
“As a group, we’ve had to isolate twice and we just haven’t been able to string together a regular run of games. Two or three lads have just come back from Covid and even now they’re not ready, it’s hit us pretty hard.
“[Captain] Sam Wood has been brilliant in helping to keep the players fit and hungry with Zoom sessions and, as we showed the other night, it’s coming together.
“I’ve been in the game a long time and am usually passed getting too excited or too down after a football match but, I admit, I was really excited to win the other night.
“The boys want to carry on and so do I and I’m sure that it we can continue to progress and somehow survive this season, still in the National League, then it gives this group of players a huge incentive to kick on.”