On a miserable afternoon at Park View Road, Welling spluttered to defeat against Hampton and Richmond Borough.

Luke Ruddick scored the only goal with just over fifteen minutes remaining leaving Wings manager Mark Goldberg distraught. “I’m just so disappointed.” he said. “I thought there were some positives in the first half. We popped the ball around.”

However, he conceded that his team didn’t work the Hampton goalkeeper enough. He continued “Other than Brad (Goldberg)’s strike at goal, we didn’t have any clear cut opportunities but I think we went in at half time pretty positive but second half it became a bit scrappy.

“The final ball wasn’t quite good enough and you know in these sort of games, if you finish nil-nil you take it, four games unbeaten. But unfortunately we let in a very soft goal from a corner. It happened straight after a substitution and the player that came on didn’t mark his man and that communication cost us the game.

“If we hadn’t conceded the way that we did we would have taken that but these home games, you can’t really accept a nil-nil. They are a team lower than us in the league and it was a home game. These are games that we should be winning. We should take all three points from these games.”

In explanation of the availability of players not selected, Goldberg said “Sanchez Ming was available today but Connor (Dymond)’s been doing a good job at right back and I thought that he did a good job today so I don’t think there’s any complaints there.

“In terms of Aaron (Cosgrave) and Gavin (McCallum), it is a shame that we didn’t have that ammunition on the bench because it allows us to think more about different options but they’ve got hamstring injuries. They won’t be available for a week or two.

“Jay Rich-Baghuelou is fit again. He was available today but the back four weren’t responsible for the goal we conceded. I thought that we defended pretty well today and it was just the set piece, and that’s very disappointing.”

Now Welling will turn their attentions to their F.A. Cup game at home to Eastleigh next Saturday. “I was pleased that it’s a home game.” he said. “Obviously, they are going to be a force. They’ve had a good run recently.

“Hugo and I went to watch them on Tuesday against Maidenhead at home and we know what we’re up against. We’ll prepare properly and on our day it’s winnable. We’ve got to make sure that we’re very well prepared and we’ve got to offer a lot more than we did today, and we know that.

“The F.A. Cup is a big competition for us to be in at this stage of the season, it’s so important commercially as well but it’s so disappointing that in the league, we are struggling the way that we are. We will concentrate on Saturday but right now I’m bitterly disappointed about our league status at the moment.”

Pictures supplied by Dave Budden.