HAKAN Hayrettin said Dulwich Hamlet “folded like a pack of cards” in the Isthmian League Premier League play-off race after a third successive defeat last weekend.
The Hamlet lost 4-0 to Enfield Town at Champion Hill on Saturday and are tenth, six points off fifth with three games left.
Sam Youngs and Marcus Wyllie scored in the first half before Jake Cass and Marcus Wyllie completed the rout after the break.
Dulwich had only lost two of their previous thirteen league games as they surged towards the top five.
But the latest defeat has left their season in tatters.
“Very disappointing. I can’t put my finger on it,” Hayrettin said. “I think we’ve let ourselves down. Definitely 100 per cent let our supporters down. Not only today but against Carshalton as well.
“It’s moments change games and we just didn’t deal with the set-piece, that we gave to them, by the way, we kicked it out from a position on the right-hand side where we had the ball from a throw. It’s gone back to the goalkeeper somehow and we’ve kicked it out. They’ve had a throw, attacked us, got a corner and scored. Ade Shokunbi didn’t pick his man up on the edge of the box, and that was the start of it. I don’t know what Manny [Parry] was doing for the second goal and after that is was like trying to stop the rot, but it got worse.
“The supporters definitely deserve better than that. We’re all accountable and we need to look at it.”
Dulwich’s last win before their collapse over the last three games was 2-1 at Potters Bar Town in pouring rain on a sodden pitch.
“One of our directors said they left their legs at Potters Bar,” Hayrettin said. “That game should never have been played. Now you can see they haven’t played on it for three games. Then we had a tough fixture straight after it [against Billericay Town] because the team that we were playing didn’t have a fixture [in midweek when Dulwich played Potters Bar], so they had fresh legs.
“We’ve crumbled, we’ve folded like a pack of cards. It’s never our intention or anyone’s intention when they go and play football to do that. We just haven’t been able to deal with certain situations that was asked of us to deal with. We didn’t do it.
“We need to have a look at ourselves. We need to apologise to our supporters for letting them down badly [on Saturday], terribly. It’s not acceptable by me, it shouldn’t be acceptable by anybody what happened. I’m accountable like everybody else, there’s no hidden agenda or hiding place, we have to address it and move forward.
“Three games ago we were on the verge of the play-offs and now…some of our defending [on Saturday] was shocking. We played without any purpose. Everybody has to be held accountable.”
There was a capacity crowd of 3,334 at Champion Hill against Enfield. And Hayrettin didn’t spare his players in the dressing room when he pointed out a harsh reality.
Hayrettin said: “I’ve told them in there, next season, when some of them are not playing for this football club and they’re playing in front of 70, 80, 90 people – then they’ll understand what it means to be a Dulwich Hamlet player.”
Dulwich travel to Canvey Island on Saturday.
