WHILE Mark Stein's future at Dagenham and Redbridge may not yet be secure, the striker is certain of one thing and that's that the Daggers should be in Division Three next year, with or without him.

Before a summer of contract negotiating can start, there is a small matter of a play-off final to aim for and because of that, Stein has quite happily put all thoughts of new deals to the back of his mind as there are bigger fish to fry at the moment.

"I don't know what's happening with regards to me playing for the Daggers next year, it's on the back burner and rightly so, that's not important at the moment. Now is the time to focus on the club's progression and winning the play-offs.

"But I'm still ambitious and if I don't end up staying another season then to bow out having got the Daggers in the Football League would be a great way to sign off."

This will certainly be the attitude that the fans and manager Garry Hill will want to hear in what could be the most important month in the club's history, a time when the players should be eating, drinking and sleeping thoughts of promotion.

And it looks as though that's exactly what's happening at Victoria Road at the moment and Stein is sure that everyone is working for each other to achieve their goal: "Some teams like Doncaster or Chester have spent a lot of money, but I think team spirit is more valuable than any amount you can spend, and that's what we've got in abundance.

"We've got the same squad as last year and with nine or ten clubs in the Conference full time we've held our own again. That's down to the morale here and each and every one of us will run ourselves in to the ground for each other when we're out there."

Although everything is going well at the moment, it hasn't always been so for the former Stoke striker who has already tasted play-off heartbreak with the Potters: "We were top of the league for around seven months and on the last month we started to stutter and slipped into the play-off zone.

"We were favourites to win the play-offs and then we got beaten in the semis and didn't even make it to the final. That was the worst feeling in the world.

"The end of last season was also heartbreaking, the way it turned out was a real low and we don't want to have to go through that feeling again."

But Stein is certain that this time it will be different as he goes for third time lucky: "We've got so much fight in the team that I honestly feel that no one can beat us on our day.

"I think we're the best team in the league, even though Yeovil won it. We had the FA Cup run get in the way of our season and that hindered our league campaign but now hopefully that big game experience will help us out.

"With our team spirit I seriously think that if we had have gone up last year we would have finished in the top four. We're not the sort of team to settle, we would have carried on pushing as we wouldn't have been happy to just sit at the bottom.

"We can hold our own, against Norwich you couldn't tell who was the Conference side and who was in Division One and I think that even a lot of Division Three teams would see us as a big scalp as they will know all about our heroics in the Cup and would have seen our media coverage."

May 1, 2003 10:30