Over eleven hundred spectators were present at a highly entertaining draw between Welling United and Havant and Waterlooville leaving Wings boss Warren Feeney pleased with what he’d seen.

Coming into the game Havant had won seven and drawn one so it was always going to be a tough challenge for the Wings, but a draw was probably a fair result.

Despite conceding a late equaliser, Welling manager Warren Feeney remained upbeat. “It was a great game. That’s what you want. I want passion and desire in my players and I’m really pleased with the players at the moment.”

“I said to them, they (Havant) are up there for a reason. You’re not going to play sides like that every week. I said to my boys that’s the way the standard should be. That’s what I want of you week in, week out. They defended well. Yes, a lapse and an O.G. but I’m not going to be critical of them because for those that we conceded today, the one thing to say is that we didn’t get beaten.”

Feeney surprise many by changing his team’s shape. “It’s a formation that I’ve tried today.” he said.

“I’ll never ask the players to do something I’ve never showed them because I’ve had managers before who’ve said you didn’t do this or you didn’t do that but you’ve never shown me on the training ground.

“I’m not one of these managers who turns around and says we’re going to do five-a-sides every day because all of a sudden you can go to a certain point you’ve got to work on things.” He continued.

“We worked on where we knew where we could put balls in behind them. Our shape was fantastic in the new formation and the boys took it on in only two days because we had the game on Tuesday night. The big thing for me is they’ve got passion, they’ve got a work ethic and if you’ve got that there it’s half the battle to succeed.

“You can’t be predictable. You’ve got to be flexible and I’ve got the players here who go we can do this, we can do that, and I thought today we drew the game, we didn’t lose the game and after a tough week you’ve got to look at where you can affect the opposition and I thought that we affected the game really, really well today.”

Billy Clifford was dismissed for Havant late in the second half but Feeney knew that wasn’t going to mean an easy finish to the game. “I’ve been in teams myself with ten men and you’ve no fear.”

He said “You get that wee extra yard and when teams are bombarding you they’ve got two good strikers. Danny Wright’s been around for years. (Jason) Prior was in a team last year that got promoted. They’re going to cause problems.

“It’s a bit like us. They put balls in the box because they’ve got strikers who are going to score goals. I thought our defence was fantastic. They stood strong and I’m not going to be critical of them. They gave me everything today.”

There was a crowd of 1,123 which delighted Feeney. He said “The fans came down today on Non-League Day and it’s what I said to Dos (Havant manager Paul Doswell). They’ve had a great game of football today between two honest teams and that’s all a fan can ask for. Hopefully, they’ll come back, and I’m sure they will after seeing that.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.