Ten men Welling United put in a brave effort but ultimately came home empty handed from their trip to Weymouth.
The turning point was when Connor Dymond was sent off. After the match, Welling manager Mark Goldberg gave his thoughts. “Well, the sending off came very early in the game and we did as well as we could to contain them.” he said. “It would have been a heroic point away if we’d held on but we didn’t so it’s another disappointing loss.”
As far as the sending off was concerned, Goldberg was very unhappy with Dymond. “Disgraceful behaviour by Connor.” he groaned. “He went diving in where he didn’t need to go diving in. It was a second yellow and I don’t know what came over him. It was a moment of madness.
“The lad’s apologised to everybody but at this stage, where we are, it doesn’t help matters at the moment, so it’s very raw at the moment.”
He was particularly disappointed as Welling had started quite well against a team who were short of confidence themselves. “I felt that this was a game that, at worst, we could have come away with a point and with what we’ve got going forward, and also set pieces, we could have got (all three). It wasn’t going to be a high scoring game, that’s for sure, but unfortunately as much as we were pleased with the way that we contained them with ten men, the reality is that we’ve lost another three points.
“The last three games, we’ve only had one point out of nine so we’ve got a massive game next week against Wealdstone at home who are running away with things so I suppose there’s no better way to respond than to get a positive result against Wealdstone and that’s what we’ve got to concentrate on.”
Dymond will be absent through suspension for that game and Goldberg continued “It doesn’t just let us down for today. It lets us and the team down for another week but if you want some positives, I think Montel (Agyemang)came on and showed that he can do the other side of the game. I thought he was excellent today.
“I thought Ejiro Okosieme was absolutely outstanding today so some positives but it’s very hard to see positives when you’ve lost.”
Although, Welling played over an hour with a man short, Weymouth were reduced to mainly long shots which didn’t cause much of a problem however their breakthrough did come from a shot from outside the penalty area. Goldberg explained what went wrong. “I think we gave him just a little bit too much space for the shot.
“The other shots they had were a little bit further out and we had a little bit more pressure on them. It was just that moment of lapse. We’d just made a substitution and Montel was just being swapped over with Gavin (McCallum) with who they were marking. It was just something that went wrong.”
Goldberg continued “Could we have reacted better to the good save that Dan (Wilks) made? I don’t know. I’m going to have to look at it again but I think that we’ll be picking holes too much because we did defend well today but it wasn’t going to be enough today was it.”
Due to Sanchez Ming’s suspension, centre back Jay Rich-Baghuelou was forced to play at right back. Richard Platt is out on dual registration but Goldberg is reluctant to recall him. “It’s so difficult because we’ve not really seen Richard being tested against a team at this level. “he explained. “I think he needs a run and for me to be able to watch him somewhere else. It’s just too much of a risk.
“There is a possibility that I might have to be forced now into bringing in a right back to cover Sanchez for the next few weeks. I think Jay did as well as he could. He does dive in sometimes when he doesn’t need to. It’s not familiar territory for him to play right back and I need to put a lot of thought into what I need to do there.”
Goldberg did confirm that whilst Julien Anau has been allowed to play in the F.A. Cup whilst out on loan, Dquame Copeland, who can play at right back, has not been cup-tied. “I’ve got to look at when his loan (ends) because if we could hang in there until Dquame’s back, then that will be for me, a sensible pick.”
Picture supplied by Dave Budden.