Interview With Spencer Belotti

Ahead of Saturday’s must-win clash against Lowestoft Town, Wingate & Finchley caught up with striker Spencer Bellotti for a chat about his time at the club so far, why he couldn’t wait to join up with his former boss and his hope that his goals will finally start pushing the Blues’ towards safety. Here’s what he had to say… Firstly Spencer, for the fans who don’t already know, tell us a bit about your football background: After playing in the sports academy at school, I joined up with Thurrock in the Conference South but I was really young about 17 and I didn’t really get games there so I left at the end of the season. I was training with Wingate reserves for a bit but I broke my arm and then got really ill, I had one step down from pneumonia so I had to take a few months off football. I just collapsed one Sunday at football; I had water on the lungs. I had a bad season after that so I signed for Oxhey Jets and things started to get really back on track there, I scored 30 in 37 and then Gary Meakin signed me for Northwood in February 2012. I finished the season there and did well, getting 8 goals in 16 so not bad. This season, we had good players at Northwood but we were struggling. I just started scoring again when Meakin came in for me again in February and took me with him to Wingate. Was Gary being manager here a big factor in you wanting to join the club? Yes definitely. He helped make me a better player at Northwood, he helped build my confidence up. I was gutted when he left in November, I wanted him to take me with him straight away but he told me I wasn’t sharp enough at the time. I guess that was his polite way of saying I wasn’t good enough then! Well he must be pleased with how you’ve done here so far. How are you enjoying it? Hopefully he is and I hope I can keep going. It’s been great here so far, all the lads are quality and they’ve welcomed me well. It definitely has helped having a few of my old team mates around as it’s a bit nerve wracking when you go into a new club so having some of the boys you know there eases you in a bit better. It’s been good so far. I’m trying to do my best and keep scoring. It was great to get scoring right from my debut [a brace at Hampton & Richmond] and at the minute I’ve got seven in eight league games, so I’m pretty pleased with that, and hopefully I can score the goals that will keep us up. Aside from goal scoring, how have you found other aspects of the game at this level? It’s a lot quicker, that’s one thing I’ve really noticed. So I’ve got to be a lot quicker. I’m looking forward to pre-season and getting fit properly but I think all in all at the moment I’m doing pretty well. Is it frustrating that despite all the goals you’ve scored since joining, they’ve only actually contributed to one point in the league? Yes it’s terrible isn’t it! I noticed that myself the other day and thought maybe I should just stop scoring so we can win! It was just that one point on my debut against Hampton and that’s it. Even against Hendon in the London Senior Cup I didn’t score and we won, maybe I should just leave it to the other boys! But no I’m only messing, if I just keep getting amongst the goals then hopefully we’ve got to start seeing results. How do you rate our chances of survival? We’ve got some really tough games starting with Lowestoft Town this weekend Yes definitely. We have to go into each game believing we can get a result. In fact I haven’t seen us play a team that I’ve thought they were so much better than us. It’s similar to what Gary has been saying, we’ve conceded sloppy goals, had some bad decisions go against us but hopefully that luck will change in our last set of games and we can stay up. I’m under no illusion that we have some really tough games coming up and the circumstances have put us under a lot of pressure but some of the boys in this squad are quality so we definitely have the quality to stay up. And finally, have you got any personal targets for the rest of the season? Just to keep scoring really. I set myself a target of at least 20 for the year and I’ve got that already so I’m happy with that. For me now it’s all about helping keep the team stay up so if I can contribute to that in any way, I will be delighted. Interview by Siobhan McCall