Following the departure of manager Danny Wakeling and his management team, Welling Town have moved quickly to install a new four man team.

It was recently announced that Chairman Kevin Oakes will assume the role of manager, with Tristan Cropley, former reserve team manager, returning to the club as assistant manager, and Peter Gill joining as first team coach. They have now been joined by Antony Gradley who completes the management team.

Oakes was manager when the club first formed in 2014 but has concentrated on building up the infrastructure of the club as they climbed the leagues. On his return to the hot seat, along with his other responsibilities, he said “Running my own businesses and football club do mean added pressures on personal time and family life, but I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m very grateful to my partner Louise, and other family members, for putting up with that. I’m a pro-active, positive, ambitious person, and being too busy is better than not being busy enough.

“I know what I am good at, and equally, what I am not, and getting the right people around me in Tristan, Peter and Antony, and the right players, will ensure that it isn’t all on my shoulders anyway. It’s the same for most managers, they don’t do it all, it’s a real team effort. I’ll captain the ship, but the talents of the others involved will be allowed to prosper, and every single one of them is passionate about the club and it’s past, as well as excited for the future.”

Assistant manager Cropley will be no stranger to supporters of the club. He only left The Boots in February having helped bring through a number of players to the first team and other SCEFL clubs.

Despite his relatively young age, Gill has a wealth of different footballing experiences. He is a UEFA  A Licence qualified coach and spent three years at Leyton Orient before joining Barnet as Academy Manager. He also spent a couple of months as first team coach at Hemel Hempstead Town during the last season, and starts a new role this season as Head of Academy Coaching at Cambridge United in League Two.

Gradley played Isthmian League and the old Kent League before being involved in academy football with Leyton Orient and Millwall. He then made the move to senior football management teams, first with Holmesdale and then Greenwich Borough.

2019-20 was the Boots’ first season in the Southern Counties Eastern Football League Premier Division and they were set for a solid mid table place before the season was cut short and declared null and void. Oakes was very happy with that and said “Firstly, please let me thank Danny and the rest of his management team, and the players, for their achievements last season.

“I think we’d all be in agreement that if we had been offered ninth at the start of the season we’d have taken it. The FA Vase run in particular was a great experience. On the shutdown and closure of football in general, it seems a very harsh way to end the season for clubs like Beckenham, Corinthian, and those in Division One like our co-tenants Sporting Club Thamesmead, as well as Kennington, Holmesdale and Rusthall.

“Obviously ending football when they did made sense, and it hasn’t affected us directly too badly as we were sitting comfortably in mid-table, and we’ve no ground to maintain so no money in, but no money out either, but I don’t understand the difference in approach to ending the season on null and void, or Points Per Game. Normality should return asap, subject to basic common sense precautions. It doesn’t surprise me there are a lot of clubs out there that are unhappy and feel an injustice has been served, but purely for us, we’ve not suffered in any way which is a relief.”

Despite the difficulties in preparing for next season when nobody knows when it will start and in what format it will be (ie shortened, fewer cups etc), Oakes is working hard. “We’ve been very busy.” he said. “We’ve a clear list of targets, mainly people that one or more of the management team know personally and/or have worked with before. Of those we’ve approached directly about next season, whenever it may begin, we’ve had a 95% success rate with positive comments and verbal commitment too as we’ve explained the club’s plans and people are excited about being part of a bigger project.

“Who knows when football might return, but I don’t think it will be as long as some fear. When people say next week, next month, January, it’s all guess work, none of us have a crystal ball, but when they are allowing shops to re-open, other countries have football back in place, and people are going out in public more regularly now than they were a few weeks ago, it seems inevitable that football will return soon, and I can’t wait. Whenever the time is right, we’ll be ready, and we’ll keep performing over and above what many others expect of ‘little old Welling’”