CHIPPENHAM Town manager Mark Collier felt luck went against his side as they let a one-goal lead slip to lose 2-1 away at Welling United in National League South on Tuesday night, writes JONATHAN LEIGHFIELD.

The Bluebirds took a deserved lead into half-time after Karnell Chambers opened the scoring in the 15th minute, however, a controversial equaliser and an unfortunate deflection meant Town came away with nothing to show for their efforts.

The result leaves Collier’s side in 11th place with 41 points from their 29 games after failing to close the gap on the play-off spots.

The Chippenham manager was left disappointed that his players were not able to achieve some kind of positive result as he felt their application and endeavour deserved some reward.

Collier said: “I was disappointed for the players because they deserved to get something from the game.

“We were undone by two very unfortunate goals. The first goal looked offside to me – we’ve spoken to the referee, who thought we had a case for that one – and the second goal takes a wicked deflection to loop over Will Puddy in goal.

“We’re disappointed we didn’t get anything because our work-rate and energy levels were right up there.

“We started the game quite well – we were quite dominant in the first half and we played some decent football.

“Credit to Welling, they did come back at us in the second half – as you’d expect. They have got one of the best home records in the league, so they made it an even harder pill to swallow because we felt we’d done enough to get something from the game.”

Chippenham are now in their second season in National League South and the focus for Collier is firmly on establishing themselves as a household name at that level.

Erratic levels of performance have affected results so far this season, with quality wins over Torquay United and Billericay Town making defeats to Eastbourne Borough and Hungerford Town all the more puzzling.

The Bluebirds boss is hoping that after a barrage of injuries that affected consistency throughout the first half of the season, his side can now kick on with most players back and available.

He said: “Really, we’re still in our infancy in this division and we need to find a consistency.

“Unfortunately, due to the amount of injuries we’ve suffered this season to key players, we’ve been unable to do that week in, week out.

“When those real key players are out, you need them at this point in the season or when things aren’t going well and we haven’t had that when we needed them.”