HESS HAILS WOUNDED WARRIORS’ THIRD WIN

ANDY HESSENTHALER may have seen his side win at Crabble, but Eastleigh’s boss believes their third win in four games may have come at a price.

“It’s going to be difficult to get a squad together for Monday as Ben Williamson has done his hamstring again and Graham Stack has a sore shoulder,” said the Spitfires boss.

And the former midfielder is laying the blame for his lengthy injury list directly at the National League’s door.

“The schedule for us is a joke. To play this amount of games in a short space of time with a small squad is horrendous.

“It’s crazy and they need to change the format. It would not happen in the Premier League and even athletes running today would not be running again on Monday! Most teams in this division have the same problem and someone needs to change it.”

However there were no complaints from Hess about his side’s efforts on the pitch, with Willliamson and Paul McCallum finding the target in the first half. Riley escaped down the right and found Williamson to slam the ball into the roof of Mitch Walker’s net.

And the forward almost had a brace with home keeper Walker at full stretch to tip his strike around the post.

But McCallum deservedly doubled the Hampshire side’s lead shortly before the break, heading Josh Hare’s cross downwards and up into the roof of the net.

At the other end of the pitch Stack saved well from Josh Passley and Jamie Allen touched the ball onto the post from Mitch Brundle’s corner.

Dover hit back from 3-1 down in their previous home match to beat Havant 4-3 and Brundle’s fine volley had the home fans believing another comeback was on the cards. And Jack Connors must have thought he had levelled matters five minutes from the end, only for Joey Jones to somehow clear his shot off the line. With fulltime looming, sub James Constable sprinted clear to seal the win only to skew wide. As for Athletic, the poor start continues as last year’s play-off contenders continue to fall further away from the allimportant top seven. Boss Chris Kinnear said: “To not come away with anything after such a strong second half is very disappointing. “It’s difficult at the moment as we lost three of our defenders and two of our top scorers from last year. “But we are rebuilding and just have to push from here.”