Dartford boss Alan Dowson felt his team deserved to beat Hampton after what he described as one of the worst results in his managerial career.

Dowson’s Darts were dumped out of the FA Cup by Isthmian South East Beckenham seven days earlier. But they bounced back as Charlie Sheringham and Marvin Herschel netted in the second half during a 2-1 win over Hampton on Saturday.

“I thought it was a deserved win,” said Dowson. “Gary McCann’s teams are always hard to play against so I’m glad we got the win. We’ve played better than that and lost games.

“We showed a bit of guts. We could have easily folded because it was an awful result last week, probably one of the worst in my career.

“I felt for the directors who have been ever so supportive.

“I could tell in the first half that we kept giving the ball away and I told them at half-time to relax as they can’t play with any nervous energy. You could sense people around the club were a bit nervous.

“I was very disappointed with last week and how we went out of the FA Cup. I felt we let the club down a bit and I’ve had a bad week as we care about things like that.”

Dowson handed teenager Marvin Herschel his first start, and he responded with a goal.

Although Herschel got a telling-off from his boss after stopping for selfies on his way back to the dugout having been substituted through injury in the last five minutes.

“Fair play to young Marvin who came in and scored,” said Dowson. “He’s only 17 out of the Academy so I was pleased for him.

“I’m pleased with how he did. He’s a young kid but he did something a bit naïve when he came off, was clapping the crowd and was hugging them and all that. I had a go about that as I don’t like that kind of thing.

“I don’t mind it when the game has finished but not when the game is going on.

“He’s another young kid who is coming through, like Sam Odaudu who is our number one left-back at the minute.

“Now we’ve got a winger who scores a goal, we haven’t had wingers who score goals so he might add another dimension to our play.

“He’s raw, he’s daft and it’s impossible to say what he’s going to do next because he doesn’t know.”

Dowson also revealed why it has taken Herschel so long to make his mark in the first team after an impressive pre-season for the speedy winger.

“You’ve got to be careful (with the youngsters),” said the Darts boss. “They haven’t shown much in training to be fair.

“Sam has started every game when he’s been fit, now he’s had an operation and will be back in two weeks.

“Marvin didn’t show enough in training or in the pre-season game at Chatham but I felt we needed someone with pace out there, someone who can run and he can do that, he’s certainly done that very well.

“We changed a few players and went with some youth, I’m not scared to play youth and I just felt it was the right thing to do.”