Let’s do the time warp again

This season’s National League South campaign is not short of drama on and off the pitch. Maidstone have grabbed the headlines for their FA Cup exploits, while Yeovil are making big strides towards the automatic promotion which they doubtless feel is their birthright.

However, there are two rather gloomier stories beginning to unfold at the other end of the table as well. Taunton appear to be in significant financial trouble, exacerbated by their pitch being largely unplayable for weeks, drying up their revenue stream at the same time as a striking a curious agreement for Truro to spend the rest of the season attempting to play on the same unplayable surface as well.

Alongside this there is a soap opera starting to play out at Welling United. For anyone who has not been to what I suppose can be described as the town of Welling, it is a time warp on the old A2 Dover Road, half way between the Victorian splendour of Blackheath and the Seventies town planning car crash of Bexleyheath. Split the difference and think 1920’s Depression, and you have Welling. For reasons related to my once peripatetic existence, I went to a dentist in Welling High Street for about twenty years, and well into the 21st Century it was like walking upstairs into a nicotine stained cross between the worlds of Dr Crippen and Sweeney Todd.

In keeping with the area, Welling United’s Park View Road ground is a crumbling ruin, desperately in need of renovation or redevelopment, depending on your point of view. The irony of the ground being sponsored by J Hearnden Skip Hire is lost on nobody. The time has come for the bullet to be bitten, and by all accounts they will be ground sharing elsewhere next season, quite possibly at the home of today’s visitors Tonbridge Angels. This depends on a variety of factors, all of which will cost them money, at a time when they are relegation threatened, with the prospect of lower crowds due to playing away from the area, coupled with reduced attendances from dropping down a league, and the increased costs of paying for a ground share. The downward spiral speaks for itself, so taking the opportunity to step back in time today may also be the last chance for me to see football here for a while, if not full stop.

It’s a damp, dull February afternoon, as befits the general gloom of the club and the area. There’s a bit of a frisson with Welling fielding recent recruit from Tonbridge, Sonny Fish, up front (the curse of the ex, maybe?) while the Angels offer up player number 41 of the season, Ryan Hanson, who comes into what already seems a rather clogged up midfield roster, after three starts for Torquay this season. Welling will be looking for the new manager bounce to continue, having unceremoniously dumped Danny Bloor, while Tonbridge will be hoping that Jay Saunders can lay the ghost of Welling being a long standing bogey team for the Angels. A couple of wins in the Kent Cup is all the visitors have managed at Park View in decades.

Let’s start the trip on the M25 – deep joy! It is mercifully dry between more bands of biblical rain. However, Welling’s notoriously boggy pitch bears the scars of this soggy winter, with a fine selection of bare patches and bobbles. As expected the ground also remains a tribute act to some great local football venues of the past, with dangerous crumbling concrete terraces littered with trip hazards paying homage to The Valley c1981, and the pitch black unlit brick men’s toilets, complete with urine soaked floor, reeking of Cold Blow Lane of the same era.

The fare on the pitch in the first half is similarly devoid of quality, with endless periods of head tennis and high, hopeful long balls. The Angels eventually start to settle, and two pieces of composed finishing by Ebbsfleet loanee Odokonyero separate the teams at half time. 2-0 up away from home against a team struggling to avoid relegation should be sufficient to take home the bacon, but this is Tonbridge at Welling, where septuagenarians have never seen the Angels win in the league, so don’t relax just yet. A quick trip to the bar for a well kept, well poured pint of Guinness for £4.60, and it’s time to go again.

Dear Lord, the second half was even worse than the first. Tonbridge decided to put eleven men behind the ball and invite Welling on to them, and duly paid the price. One good shot from outside the area, an Achilles heel for Tonbridge all season, and it was 2-1 on the 68th minute. Having been on the back foot for so long the Angels could not wrest back any control and inevitably Fish extracted his revenge in injury time with a scruffy goal at a goalmouth melee. There was still time for Shields to hit the bar as Tonbridge mustered their first meaningful attack of the second half in the 94th minute, but it was woefully too late to wake up.

The game ended 2-2, which was marginally more meaningful for Welling in terms of a point and a gutsy fightback. Tonbridge looked like a team whose season is over, grateful for the cushion of points from earlier in the campaign to avoid a dip into the relegation zone themselves. It’ll be slim pickings at Longmead next season if these two teams are both there and putting on displays like this.