Hopes of pulling away from the Vanarama National League South drop zone were dashed for Welling United when they were held to a draw at home to Slough Town leaving manager Rod Stringer frustrated.

Having been two up at the break, Welling had to settle for a point as they failed to build on a strong first half leaving manager, Rod Stringer, frustrated. “I thought we really looked good in the first half.” he said. “I thought we were excellent.

“I thought we had a really good shape and caused them problems. You have to say it’s two points lost, with the position we were in at two goals up.”

“When you split the game into two halves I thought that first half we were outstanding. We looked really compact and played some really good football but goals change games. We were two-nil up and Dan Martin’s hit a fantastic corner and I don’t know how Riccardo (Di Trolio) hasn’t put it in.”

“If that goes in it’s three-nil and really gives them a problem at half time. Scott (Davies, Slough player-manager) brought himself on just before half time and they just played percentages.”

“They put two big lumps on up front that caused us a problem and all they did was every time they got the ball, they put a lot of air on it and tried to drop it in behind.”  

Although, Slough pulled it back to two-two, Welling could still have won it. “We had to compete right to the death and we had to try and stay in it.” said Stringer.

“Then right at the end Deon Moore from six yards out has got a great connection on it but no direction. If that goes in on ninety minutes, I think we win the game. We had to deal with a difficult situation second half.”

“Just relentless pumping balls in, putting as much height and distance on it and it’s very hard. We did break a few times. I thought I could see a few boys looking tired, a few boys that weren’t at the races for periods of time so we had to make changes and all the subs came on.”

“I know that the supporters probably felt that we should have held on to it but it is tough out there when your under siege. The ball didn’t stick up top for us. We never really won enough in midfield, we never really got on the ball to get us out.”

“A lot of it was tackling from the wrong side and trying to clear headers and hook your lines and that’s football but I thought when you looked at Tuesday’s performance and today’s performance, that was night and day.”

“Today, you could see that the boys bought in to what we worked on, on Thursday and I felt that we gave a good account of ourselves but I said to the players it’s got to be somebody’s responsibility and they haven’t done their jobs for both of the goals but we were gifted two great opportunities to still win the game. One at two-nil and one at two-two. We got a draw but it felt like a loss.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.