OPPOSITION Q&A

The Podcast team discusses Dover Athletic

ABOUT ME

We are just regular Dover supporters who are all born and raised in Dover and have a strong connection to the town, as such, we have been following the club from about as long as we can remember.

NEW MANAGEMENT

It’s a bit too early to tell but there’s definitely been an improvement in the defensive aspect of Dover’s game, which must be helped by Jake being a former defender himself. He obviously cares about the club and is a former Dover player himself as well as assistant manager under our most successful manager Chris Kinnear. Despite this, it is his first time being number 1 at a level this high before. Naturally, we want it to work out and for Jake to steer us clear of relegation but like with all things time will tell.

RECENT FORM

Boxing Day was our first league win since August, and first league home win since February, but since then we haven’t had a lot of luck in the last few games. As mentioned before, our defence has been solidified but it looks like its come at a cost of our attack being weakened. We lost a great player in Paris Lock who was on loan from Wimbledon a couple of months ago which hasn’t helped as he was clearly our creative outlet. Two losses and a draw against struggling Taunton is not what any Dover wanted to see but its still early days for Jake to build the team up to play how he wants.

KEY PLAYERS

We’ve lost a few of our key players in the last few months in Paris Lock and our Goalkeeper Billy Terrell, and both of them have gone onto play for Kent clubs since then in Tonbridge Angels and Dartford respectively. Under the management of Jake Leberl and the coaching of Mike Sandmann, George Nikaj has looked to prove a real threat playing in a slightly deeper “number 10” role. He seems more comfortable linking up play from the midfield and looks to drive forward.

HIGHLIGHTS

Easily the best highlight for me was Luke Baptiste’s injury time winner against Slough in the second game of the season. Luke has been at the club with academy and senior level for a while and is a great guy and was delighted for him to have scored in such dramatic circumstances. He seems to have fallen out of favour recently which is a shame because I think he’s a great player so hopefully he’ll get a run of games soon.

AWAY SUPPORT

Honestly I have no idea. I would estimate around 50 as it is a 10 hour round trip, but I think a lot of it will depend on the weather.

BEST OPPOSITION

Worthing and Farnborough for me. Worthing were a team I tipped to go up at the beginning of the season and they showed their class at Crabble earlier this season in a game where they just didn’t allow to get going. Farnborough were just relentless in their 4-0 win at their ground in October, despite this, they are a team with lots of ins and outs and have struggled to find the consistency and away form required to mount a challenge for the play offs.

THE CLUB’S STRUGGLES

We were oh so close to the promised land of the football league in the 2015/16 season where we missed out on promotion via play offs to Forest Green Rovers. We had some success in the immediate years after finishing outside the play offs only on goal difference in 2017/18 and some solid mid table finishes afterwards, but then COVID hit.

Though I don’t know every single detail, it’s clear to me that Dover were unfairly (in my opinion) punished for simply trying to survive in a time which was purely impossible to do if you were to continue running your day to day activities. Our chairman, who our fans have mixed feelings about, decided to not take a loan to carry on as normal as he didn’t want to risk the longevity of the club. Despite his faults, which there definitely are some, I agreed with this choice. As a consequence the only way to keep the club alive was to furlough all the staff and players. This was met with a hefty fine for Dover which was the beginning of the end really.

Tight finances from then on meant a much smaller budget than nearly all of our competitors even to this day. Poor performances has led to a huge decline in gate receipts which has also hurt the club, and we are now in this sort of what can described as a limbo where we are finding our natural level. Hopefully that will be in this league, but I’m not getting my hopes up of survival this year.

PREDICTION

I think we are going to lose 1-0 to Torquay. I think we are solid in defence but not enough to withstand the threat of Torquay’s players and I don’t think we have too much of a goal threat ourselves to trouble your defence.