Duncan Gardner shares his latest edition of Facts of the Match ahead of this afternoon’s clash against Welling United.
Today represents match number 28 against this London-based-outfit who play in the very east of the ceremonial country of Greater London just south of the river Thames. Our overall record against The Wings is still pretty much of a “coin toss” despite four wins on the bounce against this opponent for the Terras with a W13 D3 L11 tally overall. However, at home, we have at least more often clipped their wings with a W8 D1 L3 split in the archives.
This weekend we are aiming to “do the treble” over our visitors, following a 3-0 FA Cup victory in October and then a 2-1 league win in London a month later. In the cup clash Brad Ash bagged a brace and Bearwish grabbed another in a comprehensive victory. In the November league game, it was steel & style that won the day as a Willson header and a Rose strike completed the turnaround after Welling took an early lead. Before this season our most recent encounters against the reds was in our pandemic-curtailed-2019/20-National-League-South-based-season under the stewardship of Mark Molesley. In game 10 in September of that campaign we edged a tight encounter with Brett Williams scoring the only goal of the game in the 75th minute, just seven minutes after coming off the bench. In our return fixture in January we enjoyed a slightly more straight-forward victory with Baggie opening the scoring on the stroke of half time and although the hosts briefly restored parity in the second period, a Josh McQuoid penalty and a 96th minute strike from Jake McCarthy ensured we took all the points back home.
Our first meeting against Welling was back in 1986. At that time we had been an established club in the Conference league since its inception in the late 1970’s, around the time Welling formed as a senior side. Following a fairly meteoric rise up the non-league pyramid to its pinnacle, Welling faced us over three seasons from 1986 until our relegation in 1989, a certain Steve Claridge being the first Weymouth player to score against this team. Our next convergence would be almost a decade later in the FA Cup 3rd Qualifying Round in 1998. At that time, Welling were one step above us in the football pyramid and goals by Paul Adcock and David Laws were sadly not enough to progress in London as Welling won 3-2.
At the start of this century, we were league rivals again and this time in the Southern League as we competed against each other over six consecutive seasons from 2000/01 with mixed results. More recently we endured a FA Trophy exit at the last 64 stage in 2008 and a couple of pastings in the Conference South in 2009/10, 3-0 at home followed by a 7-1 reverse just 10 days later.
The stellar list of selected players who have turned out for both teams today is …
Tony Agana, Lionel Ainsworth, Daniel Bailey, Narada Barnard, Josh Carmichael, Adam Cottrell, Sam Cutler, Peter Kearns, Taofiq Olomowewe, Josh Oyinsan, Andy Townsend, Josh Wakefield.
