After their Easter Monday disappointment Welling United bounced back with an excellent performance against Hampton and Richmond Borough.

Whatever happened in the match, Welling were certain of finishing in third place so manager Steve King again rung the changes. Jack Jebb started his first game since mid-October and Jordan Gibbons his first since February. However; he was aware that victory would be good for momentum.

“It was nice to finish with the best home record in the whole of the league, which was important.” he said. “Someone just read a stat that it’s the second best home record in the whole of non-league football, behind Wrexham.

“I said to the boys we wanted to do that. Two defeats in twenty-one home games is fantastic. We’ve given value for money here. The fanbase is up thirty percent. That’s been appreciated.”

Explaining the team changes he said “We wanted to get Jack Jebb in and give him half a game. We wanted to get Nassim (L’Ghoul) in and give him thirty minutes. We wanted to get Jordan (Gibbons) in. We changed the side from last week totally. Mo (Battamer) and the keeper (Dan Wilks) were the only two, I think, that stayed in.”

He has tried to bring back L’Ghoul previously but didn’t feel that he was quite right. However, against Hampton he was a danger. “Nassim came in and that’s what I wanted to see from him. (He was) back to what he’s capable of doing, not playing within himself. They were kicking lumps out of him.”

Hampton found that the only way they could stop him was by foul means and they totted up five yellow cards in the last twenty minutes, four of them for fouls on L’Ghoul. King was appalled and felt that the referee should have been tougher. “There were two tackles on him that they were just trying to take him out.” he said “That was upsetting.

The one on Thierry (Audel) in the middle of the pitch by their substitute, it was frustration, I understand that, but you can’t just boot people in the middle of the pitch.”

Overall, though, King is happy with how the ten months since he took over, have panned out. “We’ve achieved the goal that we set at the start of the season. I said we had a goal and that was can we make the play-offs. We’ve achieved that now. To give Welling (United) Football Club what we’ve done at home this season, I think the boys deserve a big turn-out. They deserve to get two thousand people in for that semi-final.

“It’s been a good season. Now we’ve got to see if we can go one step further. We’ve got the capabilities to beat anyone but we’ve got to turn up like we did in good patches today.”

Picture supplied by Dave Budden.