Following their disappointing exit from the F.A. Cup, Welling United failed to bounce back and took a thumping in their Vanarama National League South match at Boreham Wood. After the match Rod Stringer gave his thoughts to Mark Doig.

After the final whistle Stringer, the Wings’ manager, apologised to the supporters who attended on behalf of himself, the players and the staff before saying “That was nowhere near good enough. You have to give credit to Boreham Wood. When we knew Luke (Garrard, returning manager) had come back, and he was going to get a big bounce. We knew that he would probably get the best out of the team because they haven’t had the greatest of starts and I felt, today, you saw a very, very, very good football team that had everything that you need to win games. They had the energy, decision making, game management, physicality, pace, people that could finish. At this level you don’t normally get those standards.

“We never really started well at all.” Stringer continued. “I thought we’d be brave here today and start with quite an experienced team so we started with two up front but they had so much time on the ball to hurt us it was men against boys. We got in at half time and made a decision. I’ve got four subs left to do and I’m going to make all four. I thought that was our best spell. I thought when we put all the youngsters on, Cameron Andrews came on, (Charlie) Pegrum came on, Chuks (Anointed Chukwu) came on and Longy (Elliot Long) came on, and I thought we had a really good spell of the game. At that time it was three-nil and we’ve actually had two great chances.

“Then we have a man sent off which I think was a very poor sending off for simulation and I thought it was just a free kick to us on the edge of the box then, all of a sudden, the referee’s pulled out a red. They’re a tough enough team to beat when you’ve got eleven men on the pitch and when we lost Charlie, it made it another long fifteen/twenty minutes. That’s when we looked at our worst again, We capitulated. We made some bad mistakes.”

Due to their early F.A. Cup defeat, Welling now go a fortnight without a game. Stringer added “Over the next two weeks, it’s really important for me and Kev (Watson, Assistant Manager) because you do pre-season and you come out the other side of it and you feel that you’re where you want to be. I wasn’t allowing for the injuries.

“If you look today there’s no Ben Wells, there’s no Dan Martin, there’s no Chiori Johnson, there’s no TJ Bramble, then you’ve got Harvey Walker, Zane Walker, there’s a lot of players there that can probably make us stronger but what I’m starting to find is it’s probably time for me to roll the dice a little bit and go out and try and bring in a bit more fresh blood because I don’t think that some of them are for me. The next two weeks has got to be big for us to make some decisions and I will be getting on the phone to try and improve us.”

Should Weymouth beat Winchester in the F.A. Cup next Saturday, there will be another free week on fourth qualifying round day. That will give the Welling management team the opportunity for extra training and to look at potential targets. “The more free weeks the better at the minute.” he said. “The players will be in for training, they haven’t earned a Saturday off.”  

Images courtesy of Dave Budden