Dartford keeper Alhaji Sesay deserves to keep his place in goal, according to manager Steve King.

Sesay replaced regular keeper Mark Smith when the latter was injured at Dulwich in early December.

He’s played nine times since and kept his place for Saturday’s home victory over Dulwich, despite Smith proving his return to fitness in the midweek Kent Senior Cup success at Maidstone.

“Mark played at Maidstone and did really well but since Alhaji has come in, we’ve won six out of seven, we’ve kept five clean sheets so you can’t change that.

“We’re on a great run and he’s kept five clean sheets. He is part of that back five which has kept those clean sheets so at the moment he deserves the shirt.”

Sesay was at fault for the only goal of the game when Darts lost at Slough two weeks ago.

He injured his arm in making an original save and couldn’t get up to gather in the loose ball.

King added: “Alhaji was at fault for the goal last week, he should have saved it but where he got up his arm had stretched and he couldn’t get back up on it.

“I couldn’t take him out of the side for one mistake, otherwise we’d be changing players week in, week out.”

Meanwhile King was pleased that Sanchez Ming’s red card in the Slough defeat was overturned on appeal.

Ming saw red for violent conduct, according to the officials, and was handed a four-match ban.

Darts won their appeal and King said: “The referee put in that it was violent conduct (by Sanchez) against the linesman.

“We produced the video and Sanchez never got in his face, he never pushed him like they said, so they’ve looked at it and dismissed it straight away.

“If you put in that it’s violent conduct, you’ve got to show that it’s that. You can’t change it (afterwards) and say he swore, which one is it?

“We blew the Sanchez one up (on the video) and it showed he hadn’t done it.”

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