Striker Jake Robinson feels a strong finish to the season is important if Dartford are to fare well in the National South play-offs.

Darts are battling with Ebbsfleet for the third-placed finish that would take them straight through to the semi-finals.

Fourth, or lower, and they’ll face an eliminator tie first.

Steve King’s side slipped to fourth, a point behind Fleet, after losing 1-0 at home to leaders Maidstone on Easter Monday.

With four games to go, starting with St Albans at Princes Park this Saturday, Robinson has called on his team-mates to finish with a flourish.

He said: “We need to go into the play-offs in a bit of form because, generally, it’s the teams who go into them in form that perform well, not necessarily the team who finishes highest.

“We’ve got four games now to work on stuff and get it right and be ready for the play-offs.”

Dartford led the table in the early months but a dip, combined with the form of Maidstone and Dorking, means they will have to go up the hard way.

Securing a play-off place was the principal target at the start of the season but there’s a sense of what might have been.

Robinson said: “After the start we had, I think everyone’s kind of disappointed with how things have panned out but we’ve turned it round and we’re back in some form (the Maidstone game was their first defeat in seven).

“When we had that purple patch - I think we won nine and drew one - we were saying one game at a time, it’s only a start and it’s going to be the team who’s most consistent over 40 games that wins the league.

“Unfortunately, we’ve been too up and down.

“We’ve had some really good spells of football and results and we’ve also had some prolonged bad runs and it’s taken us too long to get back to winning ways.

“Maidstone and Dorking have had their bad run and got out of it pretty quickly and got back into form, whereas we were up and down a little bit too much.

“The league table doesn’t lie, unfortunately. It’s always the most consistent teams that will finish at the top.”