Dover can reflect on a brilliant first season back in the Conference Premier and may well be tagged the biggest over-achievers in the entire league, possibly on par with Macclesfield. The Kent side squeezed through the Conference South play-offs to nab a place in the top-flight of non-league football at the end of the previous season, Chris Kinnear getting the better of a much more resourceful Ebbsfleet side on a limited budget. He managed to retain the core of his squad over the summer but the expectations attached to the team were quite low. Indeed, the Whites looked set for a struggle on the basis of their performances in the early weeks of the season. They were taken to the woodshed by local rivals, Woking, for a 6:1 loss and actually suffered defeats in eight of the opening 11 games of the season. There was some decent effort in games but it looked like it will be a long and hard struggle against relegation for Kinnear’s men. However, the canny and experienced manager began to gradually improve his squad over the course of the campaign and results started to get better. Andy Rafferty, Tom Bonner, and loanees, Ricky Miller and Solomon Taiwo, all had excellent impact after arriving and the team would actually shoot up the table pretty quickly. A comprehensive 3:0 win over Aldershot at home seemed to be the catalyst for a complete change of momentum and flow and the players just seemed to believe in themselves a lot more from then on. Their excellent run of form actually stretched all the way to late January and they went 13 league games without a loss. Stefan Payne proved a lively presence in attack, Tom Murphy emerged as an excellent partner to him in late autumn, while the likes of Nicky Deverdics, Chris Kinenar Jnr. and Liam Bellamy all proved handy performers in midfield. But it was the solid three-man defence that proved the real backbone for success. Dover went on a stunning run at home, keeping clean sheets in an incredible number of games The system implemented by the manager seemed to be taking opposition by surprise now and results kept on getting better and better. Not only Dover moved into the top half of the table, they actually excelled in the Cups as well. Their reward for a 1:0 win away at Cheltenham in the second round of the FA Cup was a glamour meeting with Crystal Palace at the start of 2015, generating the sort of income that is gold dust for small clubs at this level. There was a slight slump in form after that FA Cup loss, with four defeats and a draw in five league games, along with a disappointing FA Trophy exit at the hands of Bath City. But the Whites managed to shake themselves off and proved one of the form teams in the league in the final couple of months of the season. They picked six wins in eight during March and were actually still in play-off contention by the start of April, nothing short of a feat for a newly-promoted side. Dover impressed even more in their final two games of the season when they managed to hold strong and very motivated sides like Bristol Rovers and Forest Green to draws, defying the expectations in both encounters. Overall, it has been a hugely impressive and very satisfying season and the manager will seek to retain most of the squad and launch an even more sustained promotion challenge next season.
