Alan Dowson has called on a former Millwall manager to help out his Dartford defence.

The Darts have drafted in ex-Lions stalwart Alan McLeary to ensure there’s extra defensive resolve in his squad after leaking a number of soft goals early in the campaign.

McLeary played more than 300 times for Millwall and managed the club alongside long-time team-mate Keith Stevens in 1999.

Darts boss Dowson explained: “We’ve got my mate Alan McLeary from Millwall - he managed them - and he’s come in and helped us.

“We’re getting stronger and stronger with him coming in once a week, we’re benefiting from that. He’s been there and done it but it doesn’t matter if we’ve got Jürgen Klopp in and we make individual mistakes – it kills you.

“Alan’s been in for a while. I always respected him as a player, I was a young apprentice at Millwall when he was a pro. He watches all the home games, and gives his opinion as well so we value that.

“The players themselves are not bad players but it was the goals we were conceding as a team, not just the back four, that were not right.

“Any help we can get then I’m all for that, I love doing my coaching on the training ground but extra help like that is great.”

Dartford extended their winning run to five games in National League South with a 2-1 success at Dulwich on Saturday.

A Samir Carruthers penalty and a Charlie Sheringham header proved decisive as the Darts responded to conceding early on.

“I thought it was a deserved win,” added Dowson. “It’s a funny place, a sell-out of 3,300 but it felt more like a Test match than a football match. It’s a lovely place with lovely people, they’re a decent side and we were glad to get the points.

“We keep starting sloppy and we were trying to work on that at training. I think it’s only against Worthing when we’ve scored an early goal. We don’t score early goals and it’s frustrating.

“We said before kick-off that they’ve been struggling so let’s get on the front foot and score an early goal but within six minutes we were one-down. It was four mistakes going through the team when they scored.

“It started off with a sloppy ball going through midfield, then my centre-half has to do a bit more, another centre-half has to do better with the cross and the right-back has let the lad go. That’s cost us a goal.

“We showed good character to come back. We had to sort a few things out at half-time as I knew we could do better, and we did that in the second half.

“It shouldn’t need a rant by me, they should be doing that themselves to start with.”