Defeat at home to Bath City on Tuesday night ended Welling’s faint hopes of making the play-offs.

As disappointing as that result was, the truth is that one win in six games from Easter onwards, known in football parlance as ‘The Business End’, was the reason for not qualifying for post-season football.

In truth, Welling didn’t have a great deal of luck in some of those games but their manager, Jamie Coyle, admitted that other than in the victory over Weston-super-Mare, they have not created enough in the final third of the season.

Although they have exceeded their targets, Coyle was disappointed and said “We set our standards high at the start of the year, and although our remit was to improve on last year and we’ve done that by a long way, as a management team we sat down and believed that we had the quality and had a chance of making the play-offs. It’s unfortunate that we’ve just fallen short.”

He confirmed that their final game at Chippenham Town on Saturday will still have some meaning as he is still deciding on which players will be invited back. He explained “It’s important on Saturday to have a look at changing it around and we’re still making decisions on some players so we’ll have to look at that.

“We want to finish the season as strong as we can to try and build a little bit of momentum for next year. We’re not just going to just throw the towel in. We’re going to go and try to get three points and perform much better.”

Even though, there’s no chance of finishing in the top seven, there is expected to be a good Welling following and Coyle appreciates their support. After the loss on Tuesday he said “Although we were poor tonight, the majority of the fans stayed behind and clapped the boys off and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for sticking by us especially when we went through the difficult period of losing a number of games.

“They’ve been brilliant and stuck behind the boys, especially the ones that have stayed at the end to thank them. Hopefully we’ll see quite a few of them on Saturday and we’ll do our best to give them a decent performance and the result that they deserve.”

Hosts Chippenham are in a comfortable mid-table position in their first season in the Vanarama National League South Division. They have only been beaten four times at home so they will be a tough nut to crack. Their last game ended 4-4 away to Wealdstone.

When the two teams met at Park View Road in October, Welling won 4-0. After a slow start, the Wings took control and went ahead eight minutes before the break when Joe Healy headed home from Jeffrey Monakana’s cross.

Four minutes later, Welling’s aerial strength again paid dividends. A pinpoint Jack Jebb free kick picked out Tom Bradbrook and he powered home his header giving Bluebirds’ goalkeeper Jared Thompson no chance.

Bradbrook headed another from a Jebb cross two minutes into the second half before Bradley Goldberg returned from injury to come off the bench and put the icing on the cake when converting from Ben Jefford’s cross.

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.