One goal proved sufficient as Welling United were defeated by National League Woking in a well contested pre-season friendly at Park View Road.

Last season, Woking finished fourth in the National League table before losing to Bromley in the play-offs, and they will be expecting to challenge again this season. Only two players were missing from the team who could feature in Darren Sarll’s opening league game so Welling manager, Danny Bloor, knew that they would be in for a tough assignment.

After the match he said “I think that was our best test of the pre-season so far. Make no mistake about it, Woking were in the National League play-offs last season and I’m pretty sure they’ll be in and around it again next season. We’re a new young evolving team and there were lots and lots of positives today.”

He continued “It was a really great work-out. I thought we matched them really well. They knew they were in a game. We went down by a goal to nil, that doesn’t disappoint me. An individual error again. That’s one of those things. We’re making some of those and we need to cut those out but some real, real positives.”

At present, Welling are missing a few players through injury and James Vaughan was added to the list when he went down just before half time. Bloor explained “He went in on a fifty-fifty, a real full blooded challenge, and he picked up a little one but nothing serious. You can’t moan about injuries. We have got players missing but it’s pre-season. You’re over cautious anyway but we’re optimistic that they’ll be training this week and we’ve got a game next Saturday, then Luton here on August the first, then the big kick off in fourteen days time away down at Truro.”

Lee Worgan, Welling’s goalkeeper/goalkeeping coach was absent through holiday. Bloor joked “He has more holidays than Judith Chalmers. We’ve looked at a couple of trialist goalies. One on Tuesday and one today and we’ll be ready for Truro on August the fifth.”

Although Welling are yet to win in pre-season, Bloor was not worried. “Results really don’t matter. I’ve had pre-seasons before as a manager when we’ve won every pre-season game and then lost the first few league games and others when you’ve lost then go into league games and start winning. These are practice and if you see where we’re progressing, game by game, that’s what matters.”

Images courtesy of Dave Budden