DAGENHAM & REDBRIDGE can complete a decade-long transformation this weekend, from non-league losers to League One outfit.

Boss John Still led the way out of the footballing desert, and now he has brought them to the cusp of glory.

“The task now is, how far we can take it,” he said this week.

“Maybe we’ve reached that point. But maybe on Sunday we can take it to another point.

“It’s made me immensely proud that the club is now an established football club,” he contined.

“That was my first task when I set out on this journey.”

Now one match on Sunday is all that stands between the Daggers and heights which the club has never tasted.

“This is a new thing for this club.

“To become a Football League club was fantastic and probably made most people’s dreams come true. The players who did that for the club will quite rightly be forever legends.

“Now we’re on the brink of creating another chapter in this unbelievable history, which we’ve been writing in the last two years.

“Someone stopped me in the street the other day and said ‘I can remember watching Dagenham & Redbridge play Charlton in the FA Cup when Dagenham were halfway in the conference’,” revealed Still.

“Charlton were in the Premier League. To think we could be playing them next season, shows how far this club has come in a short time,” he said.

What a journey it has been for Dagenham.

The club began the noughties in the Ryman Premier Division, three promotions from League Two.

Still became boss in 2004 and made history when he took the club into the Football League in 2007.

Now at the start of a new decade the club has the chance to place itself just two promotions from the Premier League.

“I could not have written this story,” said Still.

“I don’t think the story’s finished. I really believe there’s more we can do. We have an unbelievable group of players, and every year the team gets better.

“There’s no reason it won’t get better next year.”

Still was even forced to rebuild the squad halfway through the season.

“We lost two players to Peterbrough and Cardiff (Scott Griffiths and Solomon Taiwo) and then we lost Will Antwi and Stuart Thurgood and they were four big players for us.

“At the time it happened we had a top three side. It was a case of trying to mend their broken links.

“When it happened, I said to the players ‘keep going’ as I knew it would happen but I didn’t know how long it would take. Full credit to the players, they just kept going.

“Bit by bit and gradually we got there.”

Rotherham United, the Daggers’ opponents on Sunday, have their own dreams.

Coached by Ronnie Moore, the Millers had started the campaign like a house on fire, looking good for an automatic promotion slot, but a lapse meant they scraped in to the play-offs.

“They’ve got to be a good side,” admitted Still.

”But every week we play a big game, like Bradford or Crewe Alexandra. They are big games for us and it has never fazed us at all.

“We’re super fit, super organised and everyone’s got drive. It’s served us well.

“We’re just going to play the Dagenham way, 100 per cent.

“I hope the pitch is big, I hope it’s tiring because if a team’s going to play us then they’ve got to run, they’ve go to work their socks off.

“The players should go there and play the game. Nothing else is important. Focus on the game.”