Hopes of staying in the Vanarama National League South took a massive blow when Welling United conceded late to lose at home to Hemel Hempstead Town leaving interim manager Brian Statham disappointed.

Brian Statham’s first game in charge, following Rod Stringer’s weekend resignation, failed to give the club the new manager bounce that they hoped for.

After the game, he said: “Football is particularly cruel at the worst of times. I felt that we deserved more out of that game, without question. The lads are as disappointed as I’ve seen them for a long time and they know that they have put in a performance tonight.”

As as happened so often this season, there was a vast difference in how they played in each half. Statham admitted: “I thought that at moments we actually looked a little tired. You then question whether we overdid it maybe in training yesterday. We had a good ninety minute training session.

“You just felt that we lost the edge, maybe, in the centre of the park, that’s not anyone’s fault in particular, I just thought the game got a little too stretched for us and we lost control of the game. It just became a long ball game. They got it forward into the areas and it was just a fight for second balls but first half, I thought we were outstanding.”

There were two penalty shouts for handball in the second half, one at each end. “I couldn’t see ours but from what I understand from the guys it was handball.” said Statham.

“I think it was played really quickly at him and the referee might say that he didn’t have a chance to get his hand out of the way but the bottom line is his hand was, as far as the boys said, in an area where it shouldn’t have been and it hit his hand. I think theirs was handball. In real time it felt like handball.”

Explaining the actions over the weekend that resulted in Statham taking over, he said: “Rod actually called me. He was the first one to call me to say that he had made the decision to leave and that if I wanted to, and felt that it was appropriate, then I had his blessing. That’s how that panned out.

“I then spoke to (Welling chairman) Howard (Prosser). I hadn’t really had a great time to think about it, so I said to Howard give me the night. I was at a game on Sunday and by the time I got home I didn’t even sleep on it, it was okay, right, we need to make a decision so let’s do this.”

As the father of Welling defender Max Statham, he has a good knowledge of the squad. “I’ve been to every game so I know what all of the boys are about.” he said “We’ve had some really good performances and got nothing, and we’ve had some really poor performances which again we’ve not got anything out of them. Today I thought that we showed a fair bit of character and we carried on from Saturday.

“We’re not getting torn apart by anyone. Defensively, we look pretty sound. There’s always going to be moments but if anyone was to ask for man of the match, it will be our goalkeeper tonight which tells you the story, doesn’t it. We believe we’ve played particularly well for fifty/sixty minutes, only to lose the game two-one and our goalkeeper get man of the match.”

Images courtesy of Dave Budden