Despite not being at their best, Brad Quinton’s Welling United revival continued with a hard earned home win against Chippenham Town.

However, any thoughts that Welling were fortunate to win were refuted by Quinton. “Ultimately, we did what we needed to do.” he said. “We got the ball into the back of the net and (Dan) Wilks has never really had his gloves tested. It’s the expectations of what we’ve been doing week in and week out of how we’ve been playing and how we’ve been battling. We weren’t like that today.”

Consequently, it was mixed emotions for Quinton. As pleased as he was with the win he was less so with the overall performance. “We were slow.” he complained. “We were second best to a lot of balls. It’s unlike my teams and I won’t accept it. Since we’ve been here, I think that’s the only game where we’ve really been giving the ball away too sloppily or been second best energy wise.

“When you don’t play well, sometimes, it’s about how you react as a team and a one-nil win is always great. It’s not good to watch and I can feel grey hairs coming through from shouting and screaming and hollering at them but they know that I expect better of them.”

Although Welling had the opening kick off, they were sloppy and allowed Chippenham to have the first shot of the match in the opening seconds. Then when Dipo Akinyemi put them ahead two minutes before the break, they conceded a free kick on the edge of their own area immediately. “We weren’t set.” moaned Quinton. “We weren’t organised. We got caught cold. We spoke about this. It shouldn’t happen. We got away with it.

“Four or five weeks ago we would probably have rolled over and probably lost but you can’t play well every single week. You’re going to get games like this. I’m not covering over the cracks. We have to be honest with ourselves, and we will.”

Romoney Crichlow-Noble was unavailable due to the facial injury that he sustained a week earlier at Dulwich Hamlet but Quinton assured Welling supporters that it was not the last that they will see of the Huddersfield Town loanee. He said “Rom will be back. He’s in good hands, he’s being looked after. On Monday he’ll have a mask fitted so if you see Batman running around in a red shirt, you’ll know it’s him.”

As a result of his absence, Rob Swaine was rushed back into the first team, probably a week earlier than Quinton would have liked. “Considering Swainey hasn’t really worked with us yet, I hadn’t had him at all until he trained with us on Thursday, he did well. It’s a clean sheet and clean sheets get you places.”

There was one other change to the previous line-up with Bradley Rolt replacing Philip Roberts. Quinton explained “Phil hasn’t been well this week so we looked after him. He’s been working really hard to get his fitness up in the last couple of weeks so it’s probably taken it’s toll a little bit and we wanted to rest him and get him ready for next week. Apart from that, Bradley Rolt’s been doing very well for his (parent) club (Peterborough United).”

Montel Agyemang was brought on for his most meaningful time on the pitch seen Quinton arrived at the club and he impressed. Quinton said “He’s been training really well. Monts has been getting on the ball in training and dictating the play and his link up play was very good at training so I thought that as the game went on ‘get him on and get him on the ball.’ and I thought he did that.

“We started to play. We started to create. He was picking up good balls to make us play. He had a good shot as well. Fair play to him.”

Connor Dymond was also introduced late on and Quinton explained “Connor’s been hard done by because he’s done superbly for us since his suspension but everyone else has been doing well. He came on and shored it up at the back.”

Aaron Cosgrave has gone out on dual registration and Quinton explained the reason saying “Aaron needs to get games and he wants to go out so he’s gone with Hugo (Langton) to Lewes. Maybe (there are) a few more that we need to look at getting game time. It’s no bad thing if they want to go out and play and if I can get them at teams who play on Monday or Wednesday, I can go and see them. As long as we can agree that they’ll get the full ninety minutes, we’ll do that with some players.”

Another absentee was Gavin McCallum. Quinton said “Gavin’s ill. He trained on Tuesday and Thursday but he’s really ill. I spoke to him this morning and he didn’t look the best.”

After the game, some members of the squad who got little or no playing time had a session on the field with one of Quinton’s staff. The Wings’ manager pointed to them and said “The boys who didn’t play are out there running box to box. I don’t force them to do it. If you want to work hard and show me commitment and desire to want to take people’s shirts, I’ll change it. I’ll do what I’ve got to do. My ultimatum to them is train well, enjoy your football, and make it hard for me.”

Next Saturday, Welling host Havant and Waterlooville so players who show that attitude in training this week may give Quinton decisions to make.

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.