Vanarama National League South safety is not guaranteed for Welling United but their victory over Torquay United put them in a strong position. After the game, Rod Stringer gave his thoughts.

“It has been a good week points wise, and it’s been a tough week.” he said. “We had Dover here, then we had to go to Maidstone, and then a very good team here in Torquay. I can’t ask the boys for any more. They were running on empty towards the end so fair play for getting over the line and keeping a clean sheet.”

During the week, Welling announced that Stringer, and his assistant Kevin Watson, had agreed to remain with the club for the 2024-25 season. Stringer commented “We wanted to stay at the club and I wanted to get the job done first before we could then sit down with (owner) Howard (Prosser) and sort something out but we just felt that it was right to announce it on Thursday but today was all about getting some points on the board. We’ve got fifty-one points now and hopefully that should be enough but we’ve still got three games to go, and three big performances.”

Trying to explain why there has been a remarkable improvement in results since he and Watson took over, he said “I think we’ve just brought a bit of organisation, a bit of different mentality, a bit more structured, We’ve asked the boys to work hard with or without the ball and that’s what they do. If you have organisation in this division, that gives you every chance.

“We’ve managed to bring some players in on loan who have been excellent for us. Jason (Adigun) got the goal today and I think that we’ve just galvanised them and put a bit of confidence and belief in them. We’ve had a good record at home and we’ve picked up some points when away. I think the boys are in a good place and we’ve still got three games to go.”

When the score was nil-nil, Torquay had a player sent off and Stringer was adamant that the decision was correct. “Definitely a red.” he commented. “I think Cameron (Green)’s over-run it but it’s a bad challenge. I don’t think the boy did it out of malice. I don’t think he went to hurt Cameron but his timing was wrong and it was a red card.

“They’re a tough side to play against, Second half they just kept putting it on us and for a club that’s got such good players they were very, very direct so we brought Joe Ellul on and he did a great job in there and we managed to get over the line. I haven’t got a crystal ball. I don’t know whether that man would have made a load of difference because we’ve won games this season when we’ve had ten men so my half time team talk was don’t take that good sides can always find a way even with ten. We stayed with it. We were very good in what we did. It wasn’t a great spectacle for the second half, I’ve got to be honest, but who cares. Performances like against Maidstone don’t always count. It’s about picking up points on the way to staying in this division.”

He continued “I thought what we did quite well in the second half was we got out quite well and we got on the end of a lot of the second balls. Winning the first ball is one thing but to be good on your knock downs I felt was really important that we did that in the second half. We’d like to play a little bit nicer, we had a couple of chances to put it to bed but hey-ho, it’s a one-nil win.

“Sometimes you’ve got to win ugly. We weren’t as fluent as I thought we would have been today but there’s a lot of tired legs and these boys have to be given so much credit because they have run through brick walls for this football club since we’ve been here. I’ll leave it to Kevin to run through the bits of the game that we thought we could do better and we’ll try and get ready for another tough one at Havant on Wednesday night.”

Even when safety is guaranteed, Stringer will still be striving for maximum points. He said “Every game you want to play. Now we’ve got fifty-one points and mathematically it’s not done but hopefully, that’s going to be enough but we won’t take the next three games lightly. We’ll still try to put the best team out available and we’ll still be trying to win every game as we have done since we’ve been here.” 

Images courtesy of Dave Budden