Following a professional victory against East Thurrock United last weekend, Welling United have enjoyed a rare blank week before visiting Weston-super-Mare on Saturday.

Co-caretaker manager Harry Wheeler was happy after the way they prepared for the game against the Rocks. He said “It was high tempo in training. Last Thursday they trained excellently. I thought they were brilliant. Tristan took them through some really good drills and they were nice and bright. He got them working really hard. This week will be the same.”

It has been a difficult time for Weston-super-Mare and a string of postponements means that they have not played a home game since defeating Truro City 4-2 on New Year’s Day.

Since then, they have played four games on the road, winning two (at Concord Rangers 3-1 and at Whitehawk 2-0). They lost the other two 3-2 at Dartford and 2-0 at Poole Town last Saturday.

Wheeler confirmed that they will again be without Pierre Joseph-Dubois. “It’s not great.” he confirmed. “I think it’s a couple of weeks minimum. It’s his bad ankle that he’s had trouble with before. Unfortunately when he scored the goal (against Cray Valley PM) he got kicked right on it.

“It’s just been stop, start for him this season. He’s not always had a consistent run in the team and when he has, he’s done quite well.” Wheeler was not too concerned, however, adding “We’ve got other players who can affect teams in those areas. We’ve just got to go with what we’ve got.”

Back in August, the Seagulls visited Park View Road and left having completed a comfortable 2-0 victory over the Wings. Dayle Grubb opened the scoring after sixteen minutes and the lively Shawn McCloulsky added the second just before the break.

At that stage, Weston were the only side in the league still to have a 100% record whilst Welling were yet to claim their first point. Now, the Wings are two points ahead of the Somerset coastal team, both having played 27 games.

Wheeler is aware that it will be a tough game. “Looking forward to it.” he said. “ We take it game by game. It’s not because we won against East Thurrock that we think we’re going to be any better or any worse.

“We’ll go again. We’ll work hard. The first thing you do is work hard. I think there’s so much talent in that changing room that if we work hard we’ll win most games.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.