Dartford boss Steve King felt the final scoreline failed to reflect the level of their performance on Saturday.

The Darts needed a second-half Noor Husin strike to defeat Bath 1-0 at Princes Park and maintain their unbeaten start in National League South.

But King claimed his side produced their best football since he took charge at Dartford a year ago.

“The first half we were outstanding without capping it off with a couple of goals,” he said.

“The football we produced first half was as good as I’ve seen. If we’d gone two or three up no-one could have argued because our play was outstanding, as good as since I’ve been at the club.

“We didn’t get that and I felt half-time came at a good time for them because we were so far on top.

“We started the second half well and were the better side for 20 minutes, we could have taken another chance through Jack Barham and one from Elliott Romain and wrapped the game up.”

Darts were nearly pegged back late on. Keeper Craig King’s blunder almost gifted Bath an equaliser and it needed a vital stoppage-time block by Jordan Wynter to deny the visitors.

King added: “But at 1-0, good sides are always in it and the last 15 minutes they really pushed and put us under a lot of pressure. We became the counter-attacking team.

“Craig King nearly messed up with the pass straight to them and they nearly scored. So, I was disappointed that we’d let them into a game that they weren’t even in, that’s how I felt.

“They are a good side, they try to pass the ball and work an opening to get an equaliser and that would have been us throwing it away in my opinion.

“We should have scored on more than one occasion. It’s a new season, it’s a weird season and you’re never going to get the perfect game but I’m glad from last week’s performance where it was a battling performance that we’ve shown some real quality at times.

“If it had been more then no-one would have complained. When it is 1-0, the longer the game goes then they change their shape and pass it through you, the game looks a bit tighter than what it was.”

There was a 35-minute delay to the start of the second half after assistant referee Michael Marsh suffered a calf injury.

That led to lengthy discussions on the pitch between the referee and officials from both teams, and King revealed that Bath didn’t want to continue.

“The linesman pulled his calf and we didn’t have another official in the ground,” he said.

“There was a match going on behind the stadium on the 3G pitch at Kent County League level so we asked if we could have one of their officials. There was half-hour left on that game at the time so they would come over after that, they wouldn’t abandon that game which was understandable. Bath didn’t want that.

“The referee said an option was that someone from either side had to do it, we wouldn’t accept that. So they (Bath) didn’t want to play the game.

“We rang someone at the FA who said the referee couldn’t call the game off (yet) and they found someone local-ish 20 minutes away who could get here. You’ve got to restart the game within an hour of it stopping so from 4pm until 5pm. We started at 4.35pm. All the rules were met.

“They tried to get the game off, they’d rung the league and we’d already had that conversation and they said the game has to be played.

“I didn’t see the point (of them) coming all the way here and not finishing the game, they’d have to come back on a Tuesday night so what’s the point of that?”

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