Dartford 1-0 Wingate & Finchley

FOOTBALL is littered with quotations.

For those who love to see all-action, flowing and graceful football Bill Shankley had one.

When asked whether he thought Liverpool had played well in a particular match, he replied: "If they play six good games a season I'm happy."

Former Darts' manager John Still said: "Win your matches, don't let in goals, play good football. Any two out of three is good enough."

Shanks and Still would have left Princes Park happy men last Saturday.

The sun shone on the champions as they took care of visiting Wingate & Finchley at a canter.

Teams come to Princes Park hoping to spoil our fun and the stats show three did and 18 didn't. Win & Fin were one of the 18.

They had a couple of attempts on goal but the parsimonious Tony Kessell made one routine save and one brilliant one to preserve clean sheet number 26.

There were several cameo displays with Adam Flanagan's long throws, interplay between Brendon Cass and Ryan Hayes and good control from Jay May, but mostly it was low key stuff.

All of the hard work had been done in the previous 39 weeks.

Around the half hour mark there were shots at each end.

First Matt Batt ended a long run for the visitors with a long range shot which Kessell held comfortably and then May fired in an exocet effort which scorched the Win & Fin bar.

The second half followed the same pattern with Darts not needing to win and the visitors not looking capable of doing so.

Unsurprisingly, it was all settled in the space of about 10 minutes of typical Dartford play.

A sweeping movement ended with a goal which was turned down.

Then a long-range Steve Norman free-kick found visiting keeper Gavin King in butterfinger mode and Cass scored from close in.

Substitutes came and went, allowing Tommy Osborne, Yohance Lewis and Mark Green to earn generous applause from the 2,568 crowd.

Lewis, in particular, essayed one or two runs of mind-blowing precociousness on the left.

Then came the final whistle, the presentation of the championship trophy, the lap of honour and a million photographs.

Dartford: Kessell, Coyle, Norman (Osborne 75), Flanagan, Guest, O'Brien, Hayes, Kadi (Lewis 63), Cass, J May, McClements (Green 75). Subs not used: Bradbrook, Barnes. Att: 2,568.