Dartford assistant manager Paul Sawyer admitted he was relieved his side got their first win of the season.

Tom Bradbrook’s early header saw off Eastbourne Borough at Princes Park on Tuesday night for Darts’ first win in National League South following last season’s relegation.

“It’s a relief just to get those first points and thankfully it was three points,” said Sawyer.

“I thought we deserved it over the 90 minutes. We played well and the only frustrating thing was that we didn’t get a second goal. If we had got that, then we might have gone on to get more. We’ve had a tough couple of years and need to get back into the habit of winning football games – that brings confidence.

“It can work the other way as well and last year was tough, we lost a lot of games by the odd goal. We’ve got to turn that around and get back to enjoying our football again.”

Dartford will be expected to push on following their return to this level of football but Sawyer, who took charge of the game against Eastbourne with boss Tony Burman absent due to a family illness, warned that the expectations level needed to remain realistic.

“There’s a lot of teams we don’t know about now in this league,” said Sawyer.

“It’s changed a lot since we were last in it. Some of the teams are full-time and I don’t think any of them were the last time we were in it.

“Now there’s half a dozen who are training during the day, so we’re competing with teams who probably have an advantage over us.

“We’re getting used to it and we don’t know if a 1-0 loss at Hemel Hempstead last Saturday is going to be a terrible result or not until it settles down.”

Read the full story in Thursday's Dartford Messenger