Dartford are heading back to the Conference South for good as they ended up in the bottom four of the table for a second season in a row. They were reprieved at the end of the previous season due to demise of other clubs but there is nothing to save them this time and one can hardly argue that they are hard done by. One of the smallest clubs in the division was always up against it from the word go as Tony Burman was once again forced to work with a limited squad that was not completed until the season started in earnest. New additions in the summer were sparse and the Darts displayed little evidence that they will do better than just battle again the drop in the early weeks of the season. A solitary win from the first nine games of the campaign set the tone and quickly put the Kent side in the bottom reaches of the table. Burman was changing constantly but the effect was minimal and it was clear that there is just not enough quality in the squad. A good 2:1 win over local rivals, Dover, at the end of September, was one of the rare high points of the season but there was lack of goals and enterprise from midfield in the squad as a whole. Things only took a turn for the worse towards the end of 2014 as a woeful run of nine losses in ten games put them firmly in relegation danger. The manager was hardly able to bolster the squad and it was pretty clear that the Kent side were fighting a losing battle. Jason Brown was impressing on goal but the veteran goalie could only do so much as poor results continued to stack up. The likes of Ryan Hayes, Danny Harris and Peter Sweeney were providing some moments of quality in midfield but these remained too rare and not enough to sustain a decent run of form. The battle continued to look doomed into the spring and a costly loss at the hands of a direct rival, Alfreton, at home, in mid-March pretty much ensured that the Darts will be going down. They kept on trying until the end but their fate was eventually sealed with a couple of games to spare. It is a logical conclusion to the season for a modest side that has been over-achieving in previous seasons. Burman will be determined to fight back strongly next season and is certainly the right manager to bring the club back into the top-level of non-league football.
