Two teams in good form met at the J. Hearnden Skip Hire Community Stadium when Welling United hosted Braintree Town. Mark Doig has been speaking to manager Rod Stringer as Welling continue their unbeaten run.

Both were on unbeaten Vanarama National League South matches with the visitors having won seven in a row, conceding just two goals in that run, and Welling being unbeaten in seven.

After the match, Welling manager gave his views. “First of all, I’ve got to say to everyone that came in and helped the pitch today, and the groundstaff, that they’ve done an amazing job.” said Stringer.

“It was a tough pitch to play on but both sides had to have that. There wasn’t any real advantage for either side. But for everyone who put their time and effort in, I’m just so proud that they managed to get the game.”

As far as the actual game was concerned, Stringer continued “Our actual performance, it was a dogged one. They’re flying high at the minute and we’ve been doing the same since we’ve come in so two resolute sides there but just disappointed with us giving away the second goal. Byrdie’s (Lachlan Byrd) very honest lad and everybody didn’t think it hit him on the arm but the referee gave us one so same again. I do feel that we’re having to work really hard on a lot of decisions.

“You could see why they’re up there. They’re quite resolute. I look at both goalkeepers and neither had to really pull off too many saves. Cookie’s (Reice Charles-Cook) pulled one or two off, their lad’s (Jack Sims) pulled one or two off. Granty (Anthony Grant) went through and he pulled off a good save but what I call working the goalkeeper is constantly creating chances and trying to see if we can get the third but it was two dogged teams today on a dogged pitch.”

Stringer added “If you said to me before the game would we have taken a point I’d have probably said yeah. On reflection of the game it was probably a fair draw but the penalty decision sticks in my throat because it was so poor that we were two-one up at that stage and we might have got over the line and celebrated another win.”

He did concede that the recent high levels from recent games dropped slightly in this match. He said “There were some tired legs out there. We’ve got a few youngsters on loan that you could see looked tired today. The energy dropped off, I don’t know whether it was the pitch, and one or two of the other players weren’t as good as they’ve been in recent games, I’ve just said that to them there.”

When asked whether playing against a team Stringer had managed made a difference, he said “I know a lot of people at Braintree, and I had a good year when we won the league, there are still a lot of people that I know at the club who are still there. I know Angelo (Harrop) well. One of our ex players played here today against us so there’s always a bit of added spice from when I’ve previously been at a club, no bad feelings against Braintree, nothing like that,”

I think they’re a great club but you do want to try and get one over your old club but it’s not all about that for me, it’s all about keep putting points on the board and if we’re not going to win it, don’t lose it. Whether it’s against Braintree or Farnborough, whoever it’s against, we’ve got to have that mentality and the boys are showing that. They’re working hard and they’re running hard.”

Age might also have had a bearing on the performance. “We were very young today” he admitted. “Take both Grantys (Anthony and Reece Grant) out, we’re probably averaging round about twenty years old. I think you could see that one or two of the boys who have come in on loan were a little off-song today.

“I think that shows that it was a tough pitch to play on, tough opposition, and they didn’t have their most fluent game. Every game is different and hopefully on Tuesday we can be a little bit better than we were today. Let the players have a good rest and give us some more energy and quality on Tuesday.”

Riccardo Di Trolio was the latest loanee to be introduced and Stringer suggested that he might be the last signing for a while “I’m quite happy with the squad now. I think we’ve got enough personnel to see us through now until the end of the season. I don’t want to keep chopping and changing but the hardest thing for us at the minute is that we’re not getting loads of training time so we haven’t had a lot of time to bed in what we want to do.

“I said to them today, everybody will get their chance over the next couple of games. We’ll do a bit of rotating for fresh legs to try and freshen us up as a team.”

Images courtesy of Dave Budden