After their excellent professional league performance last Saturday, Welling United resume their F.A. Cup campaign with a trip to Hereford.

Welling manager Steve King has previously stated how important this competition is to him and that was borne out by the fact that he travelled to Chester to watch the Bulls on Tuesday evening. Furthermore, the team are travelling on Friday and are staying in a hotel to be as well prepared as they possibly can.

Having climbed up the leagues, Hereford haven’t found life in the Vanarama National League North easy and after winning three of their first four matches, they have only claimed one more point from their last seven games. During that bad patch, they parted company with manager Peter Beadle.

Before their Tuesday night 3-0 defeat at Chester they announced their new manager as Marc Richards from Gloucester City who reunites with their Head of Football Tim Harris.

In the Cup they have enjoyed some excitement. Having been held to a goal-less draw at home to Truro City they looked down and out when 3-0 down in the replay. However they pulled it back to 3-3 before claiming an extra time winner.

King’s Wings will travel full of confidence. They are unbeaten in eight league and F.A. Cup games. Although they weren’t at their best when they beat Chesham United 2-1 to qualify for Saturday’s game their tactics and execution were excellent at Bath.

For the first ten minutes, Bath couldn’t get out of their own half and it came as no surprise when they went ahead through an excellent opportunist goal by Gavin McCallum. They controlled the game from then on but almost paid for not finishing them off.

Arnaud Mendy made a brilliant last ditch tackle to stop John Mills from levelling. It came out to Ross Stearn and Dan Wilks made a brilliant double save to keep him out, the only real save the Welling custodian had to make in the ninety minutes.

Within a few minutes Welling made the game safe. Nassim L’Ghoul led an attack down the left wing and Jack Jebb crossed. Danny Mills nipped in front of the goalkeeper, controlled it, and slotted it home for his first Welling competitive goal.

Injuries have marred Welling’s progress with Anthony Acheampong, Charles Banya, Jordan Gibbons, Bradley Goldberg, David Ijaha, Brendan Kiernan and Richard Orlu all missed the game at Bath. McCallum limped off just after half time. Whilst King is hopeful that two or three will be available to return to first team action at Hereford, all of the players who represented the team at Bath staked a claim to a start so the Wings manager may have some tough choices to make.

Images courtesy of Dave Budden