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Dartford FC boss Tony Burman fuming after National League call off their game at Maidenhead United

Tony Burman has criticised the National League's decision to call off Dartford's trip to Maidenhead on Saturday because the Magpies are in FA Cup action two days earlier.

Maidenhead's first-round replay against Port Vale was moved to Thursday when it was selected for live coverage on BT Sport.

But the Darts' trip to Berkshire was set to go ahead until the club received a call on Monday afternoon telling them it was off.

Tony Burman Picture: Andy Payton
Tony Burman Picture: Andy Payton

Maidenhead requested a postponement and league officials granted their wish, leaving Dartford with a third blank Saturday in the space of two months.

Burman said: "I’m fuming. I’m so upset. We were only told yesterday and we didn’t get a chance to appeal that decision.

"What are the league doing? Are they setting a precedent? There are clubs in our league who play on Mondays so can we now say ‘sorry, we don’t want to play 48 hours later?'

"I don’t see that two games in three days is an excuse any more when teams are allowed to play Saturday and Monday.

"What do we do at Christmas? We play on Saturday and Monday over Christmas so do we say ‘sorry, I don’t want to play on the Monday?’

"They’ve known for well over a week it was on TV and they’d got a game on Thursday. We were only told about this yesterday afternoon at 3 o’clock.

"We’re getting punished for someone else’s success and there’s no need for it.

"They only wanted to upset one club and that was us.

"I really am disappointed by the way it’s been dealt with. We had no chance to look at alternatives.

"We wouldn’t even have dreamed of asking for the game to be called off because we know what the answer would have been."

Meanwhile, the Darts have extended left-back Mark Onyemah's loan deal from Luton Town.

Onyemah has made 17 appearance for Dartford since joining in August and he'll now be with the club until January 2, 2016.

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