Following their victory one week earlier, Welling United won another three points in a hard fought win against Braintree Town. After the game, manager Peter Taylor had mixed emotions.

“It was a real battle today and if I was to be totally honest, I though that Braintree were slightly better than us.” he said. “I thought we showed some good things but we also showed some things that we’ve got to get much better at.” 

For large parts of the game, Welling had their backs to the wall but gave everything in defence. Taylor said “I think we were very honest. The boys put their heads in, they put their body in if they had to and they worked extremely hard for the team so I’m delighted for them for doing that. 

“There were times in the first half where we passed the ball quite well but I just wanted to see a bit more of that because the more you do that, you take pressure off yourself defending and when we at times won it today, we knocked it forward to nobody and it meant that we had to defend again so that was slightly frustrating but we are delighted that we’ve just had two wins after a disappointing start to the season so we’re pleased with that and hopefully, the confidence will grow again.”

Welling played three at the back to counter the direct style of Braintree but were disadvantaged to an injury to Teddy Perkins just before half time. That meant that Olu Durojaiye had to drop back but that wasn’t an inconvenience rather than a major issue for Taylor.

“We’ve looked at it in training with Olu in there which, at times, would release us playing an extra body in midfield so he was used to that a little bit, on the strength of what we have done. confirmed Taylor. 

“Teddy, it’s a bit of a blow.” he continued. “The big centre forward from Braintree landed on him so it’s not looking brilliant at the minute but once it calms down, once he gets some ice on it, hopefully it will calm down.”

Explaining why Welling didn’t continue where they left off one week earlier with some superb passing football, Taylor conceded “We were playing against a different type of opposition and to be fair to Braintree, they are very good at what they do. They do play it direct.”

“They do try and get long throws in and long throws are really hard to defend. They won the majority of headers from their throws and we still didn’t concede and that was good from us but it was very different opposition and a very different type of game.” 

Taylor was pleased for the win for the supporters as much as anyone else. “The boys are disappointed with their start to the season. Like most professionals, they try to bounce back and that’s what they’ve done. At Chippenham we had a very good result that lifted them. The attitude is spot on.

“They were embarrassed. The last time they played here they lost six-nil and the game was dead after about a minute so they knew that they needed to apologise to the supporters a little bit and reward them with a win and that’s exactly what they’ve done.

“If I was ever doing a defending session in training, you couldn’t get better opposition than Braintree and what a test it was and fair play to them, that’s how they play.”

Next Saturday Welling visit Hemel Hempstead Town and after a game that took a lot out of his team he can use the training sessions to help them recover and to prepare. He joked “I’m delighted that we haven’t got a Tuesday game this week.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.