Chippenham Town 0 Welling United 0 – Wings finally get a positive result
BY MARK DOIG
Welling United claimed a welcome point at Chippenham Town at the end of a torrid week.
Following their FA Cup exit at Eastleigh, they entertained bottom of the league St. Albans City with barely a whimper. They then visited Slough Town and suffered their second consecutive one-nil defeat, and it took the Wings ninety minutes to register a shot on target.
Mark Goldberg has tried to resolve the problem by bringing in Nnamdi Nwachuku from Coggleshall Town and Korrey Henry on a one month loan from Bromley.
In horrendous conditions that caused water to get into the electrics and put the game in doubt until ten minutes before the start, the Wings had the first chance of the game. Joe Anderson whipped in a diagonal cross and Adam Coombes jumped with goalkeeper Will Puddy. Although Puddy made a mess of it, his slight touch meant that it hit Coombes on the wrong part of his head and it floated wide.
However after that, Welling had to dig in as Chippenham made good use of the slope. Rhys Tyler shot over before Dan Wilks made a good save from Karnell Chambers.
Chris Zebroski had a shot deflected over and was again off target when meeting a cross from Jay Foulston that he couldn’t keep down. Finally, he did register an effort on target but Wilks made another good stop.
George Rigg shot straight at Wilks then Luke Haines fired over after the Wings’ defence again defended bravely in a frantic goalmouth scramble.
After that Welling began to create problems at the other end and Henry had a shout for a penalty when a defender made no contact with the ball when making a tackle inside the area as suggested by the fact that a goal kick was awarded.
Henry was again in the thick of it when cutting in but he scuffed his shot wide. Anthony Cook’s free kick then picked out Rob Swaine but his header went straight at Puddy. Henry had a shot saved by Puddy before Zebroski shot into the side netting at the other end.
Chambers had the last opportunity of the first half but fired over after Tom Whelan had created the opening.
Jay Rich-Baghuelou had a header saved by Puddy immediately after the interval before Sanchez Ming picked out Coombes but he could not get any power in his header and Puddy again saved.
Whelan fired just wide for Chippenham before Chambers got in behind the Welling defence but Wilks narrowed the angle causing him to rush his shot and it hit the crossbar and went over.
Ming created another opening for Henry but he shot over as Welling started to control the game and Will Richards made a great tackle to thwart his hopes of marking his first Welling performance with a goal.
He was replaced by Aaron Cosgrave in the latter stages and the substitute made an immediate impact. After having one shot blocked, his next one from twenty yards took the slightest of deflections to cause it to come back off the post.
There was an alarm for Welling deep into injury time when Chippenham had a strike disallowed for offside but it would have been very harsh on the Wings had they come home empty handed.
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