Dover Athletic boss Mitch Brundle reacts to 1-1 National League South home draw against Braintree Town

Manager Mitch Brundle concedes Dover cannot afford to keep giving themselves mountains to climb after they came back to draw at home to Braintree on Saturday.

Whites started slowly and trailed to away skipper Kyran Clements’ sixth-minute goal before their captain, James Dunne, converted a penalty to earn them a 1-1 draw.

It had been a similar story in Dover’s opening-day National League South four-goal draw against Torquay at Crabble, where they fought back after being two goals down inside the first 20 minutes.

Brundle reflected: “Like I’ve just said to the players, you give yourself a mountain to climb before the game, really, has kicked-off and settled in. But it was a great reaction.

“I thought we huffed and puffed for a lot of the game. But they’re a good side, they came seventh last year. I just thought we lacked a little bit of calmness and quality in the final third.

“The players are leaving everything out there.

“Now, it’s just about getting those fine margins and tuning those little bits of play that I thought were sloppy. Set-pieces, we could have affected them and kept hitting the first man, so there’s little things to work on.

Report: Dover 1-1 Braintree

“But overall, it’s a point at home against a top side. It keeps us unbeaten at home from two games. At least we are making progress.

“There are little snippets of the game where we are building, rather than us being static as a team. People are coming back now from injury.

“Hopefully we can, obviously, get them into the team next weekend. We have got a full week of training, which is good.

“We’ll be analysing a lot of the game we’ve just played to just cut out the fine, little, errors. I think we have already started a lot of games, conceding very