Dartford manager Steve King saw his team stay top of the league – but admitted they almost sent him to sleep!

The Darts grinded out a narrow 1-0 win over bottom side Billericay at Princes Park to remain in pole position in National League South.

But King was not impressed with his side’s efforts as they struggled to get their game going.

“That was boring,” said King. “I nearly fell asleep on the line. We were bad, really bad.

“Rubbish – simple as that. We were nowhere near our level, nowhere near our standards. The team talk took about 10 seconds after the game.

“We were terrible. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think our keeper made a save but we were awful. Nothing was working, I can’t put my finger on it but sometimes it goes like that in games and you get the three points.

“At the end of the day the objective at the start was to get three points and we got that by playing rubbish.

“I’m disappointed because the performance was so poor. They had an outfield player in goal for the last 15 minutes and we didn’t put one shot on him apart from the free-kick when it happened. That’s not us.”

King revealed that Billericay keeper Damian Niemczycki has been training with the Darts for the last three weeks and he didn’t know he was playing against the Darts until an hour or two before kick-off.

The Darts boss originally thought former Oxford United youngster Niemczycki was at Princes Park to warm up home keeper Dan Wilks – rather than play against them!

Although Niemczycki was at fault for Dartford’s winner and later saw red for a professional foul on Jake Robinson in a debut he will want to forget in a hurry.

“That goalkeeper has been training with us for the last three weeks, just training with us,” said King.

“He came and trained and he walked into my office today and said ‘I’m playing against you today’. We didn’t even know. I thought he was going to come and warm up our goalkeeper but he said ‘no, I’m playing for Billericay’. He deserved to get sent off, I’ve seen it back and he kicked Jake straight in the chest.”

Report: Dartford 1 Billericay 0

King added: “The best thing is we got three points. They played some nice football up until the final third.

“That’s not the same team as Billericay had six weeks ago, he’s improved that team and I expect them to start to win a couple of games. They gave a good account of themselves but didn’t hurt us in the final third.

“They’ve got good players and now they’re getting (better), they drew with Maidstone and lost 1-0 to us and Hampton.

“I didn’t feel comfortable, we needed to score again and I would have chilled.”