Dover Athletic boss Chris Kinnear feels his side will need mental toughness to triumph over Salisbury City in the Blue Square Bet South final on Sunday.
The Whites showed their mettle in beating Eastleigh on penalties in the play-off semi-final second leg at the weekend to set up a promotion showdown with Darrell Clarke’s side.
Kinnear believes his players will need to match Saturday’s effort mentally if they are to cap off their season in style at the Raymond McEnhill Stadium.
Dover have been in fine form since Kinnear returned to the Crabble hotseat, losing just three games in their last 21 to finish the regular season in third place.
The club legend insists that impressive run was down to a unified squad in the run-in to the campaign.
Kinnear told Kent Online: “It’s taken a while but everybody’s together. You always worry, someone comes in and there’s a bit of animosity but there’s not now. It’s our team now – we’re all in it together.
“When we lost here to Basingstoke (5-0) a lot of sides would have just crumbled and people would have started blaming each other but that (defeat) probably strengthened us.
“You’re going to get hiccups – we’ve not had many – but this is where mentally you’ve got to be strong and we’ve been mentally very strong.”
The Kent outfit could not beat Salisbury in their previous two league meetings this term, but Kinnear reckons his players have ‘clicked at the right time’ to give themselves a good chance of victory and promotion.
“We’ve got one more game to go and I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “We went there before and should have got a result. They scored in the 90th minute and it ended up 1-1.
“Before they scored we had two or three one-on-ones with the keeper but they’re a good side. But you never know what these lads can achieve because it’s all clicked for them at the right time.”
Posted: Thursday , May 09, 2013