I don't think we can catch Woking now, admits Wings boss Jamie Day

WELLING UNITED player-manager Jamie Day has conceded that runaway leaders Woking are likely to clinch the Blue Square Bet South title in four months’ time.


The Wings slipped to third place in the table after failing to beat their neighbours Dartford over the two games over the festive period and as a result are fifteen points adrift of Woking, who clinched back-to-back 1-0 wins over Farnborough over the same period.

“I don’t think we can catch Woking now, so we’ve got to try and maintain where we are, get a play-off place, whether it’s second or fifth and hopefully we can do that,” said Day.

The home clash against Dartford, which attracted the club’s largest crowd of the season (1,815), has helped Day to re-sign midfielder Dean Cracknell from basement club Thurrock.

“We couldn’t afford to keep him last year and in fairness and all credit to him, he’s come back on a lot less than he was getting,” revealed Day.

“He’s a good experienced player, to take us into the second half of the season.”

Day added: “Loick Pires has got a bad knee that has to be assessed so hopefully we can get him back fit for Truro.  We’ve got a squad that I’m happy with and we’ll aim to maintain that play-off place.”

Tenth-placed Truro City visit Park View Road on Saturday.  The Wings came away from Cornwall with a 3-2 win in November.

Day said: “We’ve got two tough games coming up, Truro and Weston-Super-Mare but we need to get something from them. These are the games where we need to get some points.

“Dover and Basingstoke are the two that everyone is looking over their shoulder at. We’ve just got to keep our distance between them. 

“Where we don’t have a massive squad, people get tired, so if I can add people like Crackers (Cracknell), people with experience, hopefully we’ll avoid the March problems that we did last year.”

Day explained about the goalkeeping situation at Park View Road, especially as he almost lost the services of Nick Pope, who is on an emergency recall from League One leaders Charlton Athletic at present, before the 1-0 defeat at Dartford on Monday.

“We’ll have to see what happens for Saturday as I don’t want to keep chopping and changing.  Hopefully we can keep him,” said Day.

Visit Welling United’s website: www.wellingunited.com  

Welling United  v  Truro City
Blue Square Bet South
Saturday 7 January 2012
Kick Off 3:00pm
at Park View Road, Welling, Kent DA16 1SY