We finished 2nd in the SCEFL “First” division, thus managing only the 7th top-two finish in the club’s history.  Alongside the three titles we’ve won in 1941-42, 1981-82 and 2012-13, the second-place finishes have been:

1962-63         Corinthian League (should have been promoted to a higher level of the new Athenian League structure, but “promotion” was by election and we missed out)

1970-71         Athenian League “First” division (promoted)

2011-12         Kent League (only champions Herne Bay promoted)

We also won two cups, the London Senior Trophy and Hospitals Charity Cup.  It’s the first time we’ve won two knockout competitions in the same season (as opposed to a league and cup double as in 2013) since 1947-48, when we won the Kent Amateur Cup and Corinthian League Memorial Shield.

Harry Harding set a new club record of 45 goals in a season, overtaking Colin Johnson’s mark of 43 in 1965-66.  Until this decade Colin had the top four peacetime tallies, with 43, 39, 38 and 37 within six seasons, but Alfie May’s 41 in 2014-15 got among them and now Harry has beaten them.  We shouldn’t really compare these figures with 1940-41 (Martin Ruddy 56, Bob Collins 39) and 1941-42 (Ruddy 84, Collins 67) since the circumstances of wartime football were very different.

 

We had an outstanding run in mid-season.  Following the SCEFL Cup defeat at Elmstead on 6 November, we went 17 games unbeaten from 10 November to 9 March, eclipsing the previous club record of 13 which we’d done on six occasions. 

 

During that run we had 8 consecutive wins from 29 December to 23 February, equalling the club record set on four previous occasions.  We then finished the season with 7 consecutive wins, the most with which we’ve ever ended a season, meaning that in the opening game of next season we’re going for another club record-equalling run.

 

The last five of those wins, 20 January to 23 February featured a club record 5 consecutive clean sheets for Dan Teeley, giving Dan the club record for a single keeper.  We had 5 in a row in March 1934, but Wally Williams played in the first game and Cyril Peters the remaining four.

 

We scored 100 league goals (103 in 34 games) for only the second time in our history, the other being the record 113 in 32 games in 2012-13.  It’s only the third peacetime season where we’ve averaged better than 3 goals per league game, the other one being 1945-46 (50 in 16) – although this was a transitional season from wartime football.

 

We won two league away games 6-1 (Lewisham Borough on 1 October and Greenways on 1 December) – only the second time we’ve scored 6 or more in two away games in a league season, the other being 2012-13 (6-0 at Beckenham and Fisher).  Oddly enough, we’ve scored 6 or more in away league games 17 times in our history, and 9 of these have come since 2008!

 

A few oddities en route to the Hospitals Charity Cup triumph: against Meridian on 30 October Guy Mpungi became the first Dere ever to come on as the 8th substitute! (or “interchange” if you insist) – we made 7 in a HCC tie last season.  In the same tie Gravlyn Kitondo for Connor Dobson was our first substitution ever to be directly reversed later in the game.  In the final Osita Isichei became the first Deres player to come on as sub twice in the same game!

 

The 11 players who started our opening game had only made 6 previous starts and 11 sub appearances for Deres between them.  But we went on to field just 34 players all season, the lowest number since 2001-02 when we only used 31 players.  That was the season when (uniquely in our history) all 11 players who started the opening game were still at the club at the end of the season. 

 

Owen Jones won 75.5% of all available points in his first season as Deres manager, putting him top of the managers’ table (for now) ahead of Micky Collins, who won 67.4% over his three seasons.

 

All these records are in the context of us still being at the lowest level in our 97-year history, but you can only beat what’s in front of you!