Two weeks of cup football has given Welling United a break from Vanarama National League action.

However, they return to their ‘bread and butter’ on Saturday when they entertain Macclesfield Town.

Losing 5-0 at home to Carlisle two weeks ago led to a lot of questioning on social media over the Welling tactics and team selected by the management. Last weekend’s victory at Tilbury in the F.A. Trophy did little to dampen the doubters.

Head Coach Matt McEntegart is keen to assure the supporters that they are going in the right direction and doing everything that the management team are passionate in their desire to bring success to the club.

“A big thing is that we, the squad and management team, do our absolute very best every single week. I’m sure the people on the sidelines see the three of us scrapping for every single ball, every single decision on the sidelines.

“The group of lads out there is an honest young hungry group of lads and they are going to make mistakes and they are going to have poor performances, but they will always come off having left their heart and soul out on the pitch and they’ll leave their heart and soul on the training ground.

“Whether people believe it or not, we work very, very, very long hours to try and give us the best chance of winning games.

“The only thing that we would ever ask for is support off the fans because people might not believe it but support means so much to us. When there’s negativity around us, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s difficult. It’s hard.

“When there’s support, and you see supportive faces, and you see people getting you over the line and clapping you, and giving you messages of support, it does give you that extra boost to go the next yard, to go the hard yards.

“At the moment we all want the same thing. We want to win. We want to win games of football and the only way we can effect it is by going forward and being positive. For a small club like ours, we’ve said it before, I honestly do believe that we need to stick together because if we’re divided, it’s going to be very difficult.”

They will need the full backing of their supporters when they entertain ninth placed Macclesfield on Saturday as they have already been beaten by the visitors this season, at Moss Rose. Back in August, the Silkmen prevailed 2-1. Danny Whittaker gave the hosts the lead in the first half and Kristian Dennis doubled it within a minute of the start of the second half. Sahr Kabba netted an injury time consolation goal in injury time.

In the corresponding fixture last season, Macclesfield escaped with a point when Welling did everything other than score. Michael Chambers late header that crashed back off the bar summed up the day.

Although Welling’s 4-3 victory at Tilbury last Saturday looks like a thriller on paper, they were four up with eight minutes remaining and never in danger. Team manager Loui Fazakerley is confident that Welling can carry that into the game with Macclesfield.

“We’ve got loads of positives to take from the game. We’ve scored four goals. We could’ve scored more so we’ve got to take that into the game on Saturday. We’ve always got things we need to work on, we work on those things in training, but the main thing is that we’re going into that game on the back of a win and on the back of scoring four goals. We can definitely feel positive going into that game.”

As it is the final game before the festive period, Welling will be keeping up their tradition by handing out Christmas cake and wine for the adults, whilst the first twenty under 12s will be handed selection boxes.

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.