On a heavy pitch, defeat at home to Dorking Wanderers resulted in Welling United dropping into the bottom four of the Vanarama National League South leaving manager Rod Stringer disappointed.

After the game, Rod Stringer gave his thoughts. “I don’t know why we have an Achilles Heel and give everybody a one goal start. I don’t get that” he said.

“They got a sloppy ball in the box and I think the lad turned Riccardo and they scored it, which was disappointing because we came out from our team talk to try and get the boys fired up. They all know their jobs.”

“They (Dorking)’re a good side but I thought we nullified them and I think, to be honest, they were probably lucky to go home with three points.”

“First half, we’ve had four or five great chances.” he continued. “One is a handball off Harvey Walker, the referee doesn’t give it, Genie (Gene Kennedy)’s hit the bar, we’ve had TJ (Bramble) miss pretty much an open goal, and I don’t recall Rhys Lovett having much to do.”

Although the result was disappointing, there was no issue with effort. Stringer said: “I thought we showed a helluva lot of character today, the pitch is tough, that’s for both teams. We believed in ourselves, you could see there was confidence within the team.”

He was less happy with some of the officiating, probably with just cause. “I have to say, some of the decisions I have seen here today, right to the end when it looked like Genie may have got a pen, we conceded the pen to in Weymouth, similar sort of thing, but we don’t get the rub of the green and I just said to the boys in there, when you’re down there, you don’t get the rub of the green.”

“There was certainly a penalty in the first half that the referee could have given us and I thought there were some strange decisions. Genie got booked for literally doing a no nothing situation and there were two or three situations out there today that we could discuss that never went our way.”

Even though Dorking Wanderers are the league leaders, anyone who was watching who was unaware of the league placings may not have known which team was top, and who was struggling.

Stringer confirmed: “The boys gave us everything today. I wouldn’t say we’ve been beaten by the better side because I don’t think that was evident today. We worked hard, we gave it a great shout and we’re going to have to keep producing those performances all the way from now until the end of the season.”

“The only bit that I would say is disappointing is that when you drop into that section (the bottom four), I’ve been saying to the boys for weeks now about knowing how this league is, and about knowing how it can change.”

“We had that cushion, and that cushion’s now gone. If the boys want to play like that, we can go and get results.”

“I said what is the situation between where we were on Tuesday night where we didn’t show anything, and then we put a performance on like that on a very tough pitch and actually ran our socks off and actually had a real go so on a better day against maybe a little bit lesser opposition, and you get a bit more rub of the green from the man in the middle, I think we stand here and we’ve got a positive point if not three.”

“I don’t think Marc (White, Dorking manager) will be happy with his performance today. He’s pleased that he’s come here, it’s a tough place to come, they’ve got the goal early doors, which was going to be a bit of a poor goal again, and at the end of the day I think he’s going to be quite happy that he’s come away with the three points.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.