Paul Sawyer felt Dartford should have beaten Sutton at Princes Park on Saturday.

Assistant manager Sawyer took charge of the Darts for the second match running with boss Tony Burman again absent due to a family illness.

He saw Tom Bradbrook twice give Dartford the lead only for Sutton to fight back on both occasions during a pulsating National League South match which eventually finished 2-2.

Sawyer said: "If you’re a neutral, you’ve come along and you’ve seen a really good game of football.

"In the first half it was end to end, Sutton had a very good spell and we were defending set-pieces, putting our bodies on the line.

"But when we broke in the first half, we looked dangerous. They played quite a tight midfield in the first half and we were trying to get the ball out to Ryan Hayes and Jack Simmons.

"I thought the first half was good and in the second half we were excellent. We really attacked the game, got ourselves in front and at that stage, we just felt we needed a third goal. If we’d got three, we could have got four or five.

"But against teams as good as Sutton, all the while you’re only one goal in front, it’s only going to take one chance and in fairness, they got a good cross in and finished it well.

"Even after that, we had a couple of chances. It’s disappointing not to win the game but there’s an awful lot of positives. We’ve said to the lads, yeah, be disappointed but also think to yourselves 'we’re probably playing against one of the better teams in the league and we’ve come away with a lot of pride and really should have won the game'."

Bradbrook knew little about his second goal when Ross Worner's attempted clearance hit him in the face and bounced back past the Sutton keeper into the net.

The striker lay motionless for several minutes but was eventually able to walk off the field and later picked up his award after being named sponsor's man-of-the-match.

Sawyer said: "Tom’s OK, he’s just got a very sore jaw.

"The ball hit him straight on the jaw, it did knock him out but medical team are saying he’s OK. His jaw feels sore but it’s not broken or anything like that so we’ll just have to see how he gets on over the next couple of days.

"We were really pleased with Tom in pre-season. We thought he finished pre-season really well and he started the first three games.

"I thought he was excellent on Tuesday night (when he scored the winner against Eastbourne) and a lot of it is confidence. You can see the confidence coming back for a lot of the lads.

"Tom thoroughly deserved his man-of-the-match, he was excellent."