THE last time Dartford and Sutton United met, it was the home side who were beaten as Sutton went down 3-0 in a game which included a spectacular headed own goal.

Since then, Sutton have added a lot of height to their rearguard and indulged in a bit of reconnaissance work at Billaricay the Tuesday before.

The management team and the squad - minus ex-Dart Bradley Woods-Garness, who is on loan at Hendon - had hyped themselves up for Saturday’s clash at Princes Park. And it showed.

Defending the Academy End, the visitors filled midfield with five very mobile players and were at Darts like terriers.

When not hunting in packs, the visitors gave Darts’ sporadic attacks no space whatsoever.

Dartford’s defence, however, coped well enough with what was thrown at them and Andrew Young exhibited faultless handling from all dead ball situations which, incidentally, made nonsense of his zero points in the fans’ forum popularity poll.

When not actively involved in play, Sutton were keen to offer advice to referee Mr Stephen Child and also to participate in a couple of handbags incidents with Dartford players.

With half-time approaching, Sutton took the lead when the prominent James Norwood rounded off a move by slipping a low effort past Young and into the net.

As expected, Darts gathered themselves after the break and began to get a fair share of play as a result.

The introduction of Carl Rook for lone operator Rob Haworth and, soon afterwards, Ryan Hayes for Danny Harris, gave Darts more impetus, resulting in visiting custodian Kevin Scriven having to make four key saves, two from Hayes.

Sadly, to all intents and purposes, the game was put beyond Darts on 79 minutes when substitute Sam Gargan rolled the ball agonisingly slowly past the unprotected Young following a defensive mix-up between two Darts’ defenders.

Off-field, a splinter group of Darts’ supporters infiltrated the Sutton end in both halves and gave a good account of themselves in the chanting wars.

Dartford: Young, Burgess, Gross, Flanagan, Coyle, Dafter (Noble 76), Harris (Hayes 67), White, Haworth (Rook 66), Burns, Bradbrook. Subs not used: Johnson, Beales. Att:1,160.