Defeat for Welling United at Farnborough in the Vanarama National League South marked the end of the road for manager Rod Stringer.

Twenty four hours after the match had ended, it was announced on the Welling United website that Stringer had offered his resignation to chairman Howard Prosser, and that it had been accepted. Brian Statham was announced as caretaker manager for the remainder of the season.

After the Farnborough match, Stringer gave what transpired to be his last post match comments. “It’s another defeat.” he said.

“I can’t say I’m pleased but I was pleased with a lot of our performance today. In the first half we did very, very well. We got the goal nice and early. We had some good chances as well.”

“I don’t know why people didn’t shoot when we got inside the box on probably three or four occasions that could have put us two-nil up. We knew exactly what we’d face today.”

“A lot of balls down our throats, obviously they’re biggest restart is the throw that they like to try and launch in the box and I thought we dealt with it quite well.”

That was until Farnborough equalised five minutes before half time from a long throw in. Stringer said: “We came here last season and we lost one-nil, that was from a long ball and a goalmouth scramble. Disappointed with that as we knew that was going to be the case.”

“Obviously Davy was suspended today, which doesn’t help. It went to one-one and we got in at half time. (I was) a little bit disappointed that we didn’t effect their goal a bit more in the second half but to be honest I just said to Rhys Lovett, what’s he had to do other than in the phase when they scored and he pulled off a couple of good saves.”

Stringer thought that goal should not have stood. “There was a big offside shout for that as well and I thought Genie (Kennedy) probably could have got us a pen.” he continued “Yet again, we haven’t had too many decisions run for us but I can’t blame it on that.”

“It’s about both boxes at the end of the day. Other than the goal that we scored, I don’t think that we’ve, in the first half, took the opportunities that we’ve made. I think that is the difference.”

“And then for them to go in one-one after just a long throw it probably gave them just the sort of boost that they needed and they’ve only got to try and get the next goal that could have come from a long throw but didn’t. It came from a phase of play that we never dealt with and unfortunately that’s two-one.”

“I can’t knock the boys. I think they’ve had a go today and we probably looked really good in parts and probably gave the fans a lot of confidence that they can do this. To go two-one down with probably only two opportunities has been the Achilles heel pretty much all season.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.