A late Dartford goal proved decisive as Welling United suffered defeat on New Year’s Day.

After the game, Wings’ manager Steve King said “We’ve had enough chances to win that game. We’ve got into some good areas, shooting over the bar many, many a time. I think that we defended brilliantly for ninety-nine percent of the game and then it’s a nothing ball in the box, a scramble and they’ve tapped it in.”

He continued “We got in dangerous areas, but it was just the finishing. We’ve got to take our chances but we haven’t.”

Still disappointed he re-iterated “I thought we thoroughly deserved something from the game today. There’s no way Dartford deserved to win the game.

“We scored a perfectly good goal that gets disallowed because the linesman was trigger happy. I thought that the referee should have gone over to the linesman and asked who was interfering but he didn’t.”

There were a number of changes to the team that beat Dartford on Boxing Day then lost to Concord three days later. He explained “We changed it a bit today as we have five games in twelve days and you can’t expect semi-pro players to play all of them.

“Gavin (McCallum) was rested we just decided to change it. We gave Brendan (Kiernan) a chance. He hasn’t started in four games so we thought we’d give him an opportunity to start.”

Danny McNamara was also rested with Thierry Audel moving to right back and Anthony Acheampong starting at centre back. King added ”I  knew the physical presence of them at home. I know what they’re like and I was proven right. Everything is a fifty-fifty fight for the ball. They just put it in.”

When the players were back in the changing room King addressed them saying “I said to them in there ‘We didn’t deserve to lose the game. I’m gutted for you. I feel for you today. You put your bodies on the line and you did ever so well.’”

There is little time for Welling to dwell on the loss and King said “It’s been a disappointing last couple of games but we’ve acquitted ourselves well. We’re still in the top six, even after today, so we’ve obviously been doing something right.

“We’ve had a couple of defeats, but we’ve got a home game on Saturday and we’ll have to bounce back. We have to go again. We can’t sit here feeling sorry for ourselves. It is what it is. We’ve lost a couple of games including a derby game which we didn’t deserve to lose, and I think everyone can see that, but you’ve got to take your chances. We’re on a little sticky patch and we need to come out of it.”

King accepts that Welling need to turn their form around and stated “It doesn’t get any easier. We’ve got Truro who’ve won seven out of their last eleven games, then we’ve got Woking at Woking who won again today. Then we’ve got Oxford at Oxford and they’re flying. There are no easy games.”

Images courtesy of Dave Budden