By Simeon Wright at Champion Hill
The Gavin Rose era looks set to continue at Dulwich Hamlet – but the popular manager admits team facilities must improve if more progress is to be realistic.
The Hamlet’s 2-1 home win over Hemel Hempstead secured tenth place in the National League South, the highest league finish in the club’s modern history. Leading goal-scorer for the third consecutive season Danny Mills opened the scoring with his twelfth of the campaign, before left-back Andre Blackman doubled the lead with his second goal for the club.
Rose made one change from the previous weekend’s collapse away to Dorking Wanderers, with Jamie Splatt coming into midfield alongside Michael Timlin.
Rose praised 21-year-old Splatt for his performance.
“I thought Jamie did really well with his opportunity today, and as a team we played some good football and got some good goals,” Rose told the News.
“Probably thought we could have got a penalty and a sending-off as well and could have killed the game, but that never happened and they got back into it.
“Generally I was happy with the performance and the win.”
Remarkably, Giovanni McGregor was available for selection despite a red card for dissent away at Dorking last weekend.
Rose said: “To be honest we don’t know [why McGregor was not suspended], all we know is that he was available so we went with him.”
The Hamlet occupied themselves in the play-off positions for most of the season but plummeted down the table after their February defeat at Hampton & Richmond set in motion a run of eleven matches without a victory.
Saturday’s winning end to the campaign arrested the slide, but tenth and eight points off the top seven left Rose in a regretful, yet reflective mood.
He said: “I think you get what you deserve in football. Obviously we have quite a small squad with probably not enough depth, and that’s got the better of us. You get what you deserve.
“There’s times we should’ve won games and didn’t finish off chances, so we can’t feel sorry for ourselves. We had opportunities to win games and didn’t take them.
“It’s one of the best squads we’ve had in the Conference South, but it ain’t the best we’ve had in my time because we’ve had some very good squads in the past. I think if we had four or five players who could push us on we could go to another level.”
As well as having a small squad – which was pushed to the limit during the final quarter of the season by an injury crisis – Dulwich, since the turn of the year, have been forced into highly inconvenient late-evening sessions in unfamiliar surroundings over at Charlton Athletic’s training ground.
Discussions over the future of Rose, now thirteen years into his Dulwich tenure, will begin once he and the club have had a chance to their gather thoughts on the season.
“I think there’s no issue with me staying on, I think the only thing we’re talking about is improving our facilities and our changing rooms, they’re not of the level,” Rose explained. “We need a training ground and we’re trying to get one.
“We just need a little more tools to be able to do our jobs a little bit better. The club are trying their best to help us with that.
“[The training ground situation] hasn’t been ideal, but we’re not ones to make excuses. Our conditions are our conditions and we get on with it.
“But obviously when you get an opportunity to start the season fresh we’d like to start it with less problems and things to help us, so that’s what we’re talking about.
“We’ve been planning for months in terms of next season.”
Image: @robavis