Welling United suffered their heaviest defeat of the season as they crashed five-nil to an impressive Dorking Wanderers side. After the game, new manager Steve Lovell had no doubt in the reason for the heavy loss.

“Too many people not fit enough” he moaned. “You can’t expect to get miracles out of players if they’re not fit.

“Dorking are a good side. They’re top of the league and deserve to be there. Their fitness levels were way above ours and (for me) to come in at this time of the season and try and get them fit is impossible.”

Some of the defending was especially disappointing and Lovell continued “The two goals in the first half, we gave them which were defensively atrocious. Then we start the second half a little bit brighter and within three minutes we’re three-nil down and you’re never going to come back from that.”

He picked out one goal in particular as an example, saying “The second one, it’s come across and the fella’s got a free header at the far post. You can’t expect to concede five goals and win games. You’ve got to score six and we never looked like scoring one today, to be honest.”

Defending of dead ball deliveries, which the second goal was, has been a problem for Welling all season but it goes beyond that as Lovell was keen to explain. “It’s not just set pieces, it’s in general play.” he said “If you’re not fit enough with someone you’re supposed to be marking, you’re not going to stop conceding goals. 

“It was like chalk and cheese between this week and last week but Dorking are a much better side than Dartford. Games are coming thick and fast, Saturday, Tuesday all the way through now until the end so we’ve got to dig in.”

For the first time this season, Welling fielded an unchanged team and Lovell confirmed that he will be using the players within his squad for the time being. “For one thing, you don’t know what’s going to happen with the league anyway, and for another, you don’t know about the finances and what’s going to happen there.

“We’ve got enough players here with the ability to do what we want them to do.” he continued. “Last week was an example, but it’s a worry for me, the fitness levels. They’re not sharp enough.”

Although, it appears to be likely, but not guaranteed, that there will not be relegation from the National League South again this season, that’s not a concern to Lovell. He said “That’s irrelevant really. We want to win games. We want to move up the league. We don’t want to be down at the bottom.

“I’m not saying the boys are not trying, they’re trying their best but it’s not good enough because they’re not fit enough. The ball retention today, you work hard to get the ball back and you give it away. I’m really disappointed and they are too. I know that they (Dorking) are a good side but so are we and we never showed it today.

“We were poor today but you have games like that and we’ve got to bounce back on Tuesday. We’ll put a team out and we’ll have a go against Ebbsfleet and we’ll see what happens. That’s all you can do at this time so we’ll keep digging in and doing what we have to do.”