Boxing Day sees North West Kent’s Welling United travelling to Margate on the coast for a festive season ‘derby’.
To get there, they will have to travel through Dartford, and then pass Gravesend, both places that host football in the Vanarama National South.
Both teams are in desperate need for points to get away from the relegation zone. Following last weekend’s results, Margate have dropped into the bottom three whilst Welling are now one place above.
As for current form, they are even further apart. Margate’s last league win was on 8th October and their last first team win in any competition was a 2-1 F.A. Trophy extra time victory at Hastings United. They haven’t won a league point since.
In contrast, Welling have been 100% in December with trophy victories at Concord Rangers and at home to Hythe Town, plus league wins against Bath City and Concord.
Nikki Bull, Margate’s manager, has taken steps to improve the situation with three new signings this week.
Tommy Rooney was part of the Brentford Development Squad and was sent out for some first team football at Tilbury and East Grinstead Town two seasons ago before moving North.
Last season he joined Scarborough Athletic before moving to Brighouse Town and then Boston United.
Alex Henshaw is a 22 year old who was capped by England at U16 and U17 level before moving from Swindon Town to Manchester City. He made his league debut for Chesterfield on loan, had a spell for Bristol Rovers and then signed for Ipswich Town.
After a loan spell at Blackpool he left Ipswich and signed for Kilmarnock.
Oneil Odofin started his career at Torquay United but joined Corby Town at the start of the season and earned a trial at Burnley. He left Corby in October.
On the debit side, on-loan Leyton Orient striker Victor Adeboyejo has been recalled by his parent club to cover for injuries.
Bull’s counterpart, Jamie Day, has been a lot less active as he has been able to play a pretty settled side. He is not taking anything for granted, however. “If you play the teams that are in the situation like Margate and you take your foot of the gas, you get beat. It’s a simple fact. They’ve got young lads that want to do well and they’re not playing for hardly any money and that sometimes can work in your favour.
“The down side for them is that if you can get on top and and you can get your noses in front, sometimes it looks like they’re going to collapse just because of the situation they’re in. We know that they need points like we need points .
“It’s just an unfortunate situation they’ve got themselves in. For us, we’ve just got to be professional . We’ve got to use all the info that we’ve got and use it to our advantage and the boys not take their foot off the gas and go there and we need to be ruthless”
Nine days without a game, and just two training sessions was not quite how he would have preferred to prepare. He continued “We wanted to change training but were unable to do that because of people’s work schedules. The gap between the last training schedule and Boxing Day is not ideal but there’s not a lot we can do.
“We’ve just warned them about looking after themselves over Christmas, which from what I’ve seen, I know they will do It’s not ideal, but it happens. There will be a lot of teams in the same boat.”