MARK Goldberg is hoping to talk Nic McDonnell into coming back to Bromley’s first team squad after the striker made a surprise substitute appearance in Saturday’s friendly with Charlton.

The 31-year-one called time on his football career in October 2010 to go travelling but recently returned to the UK.

He rang his former boss Goldberg to ask for a ticket for the Addicks match and the next thing McDonnell knew he was training with the Lillywhites ahead of the game.

Goldberg explained: “As I’ve always said to everybody I’ve never been able to replace Nic McDonnell since he left.

“When he phoned me up during the week to say he was back and could he have a ticket for the game, I said ‘no, you have to play so turn up with your boots on Thursday night for training’.

“For me I’m absolutely delighted he is back and I don’t want to let him go now, I’m going to work with him. He is only 30 and has got another four years in him.

“Nic is Bromley through and through and I think it is fair to say he and I have a special relationship.

“I want to make sure we keep it.

“I’m convincing him to make a comeback and I think he is up for it.”

The Lillywhites went down to two second half goals against a young Addicks side on Saturday, although Goldberg felt the final score was harsh on his side, even if he was the first to admit they fell short in certain aspects of their game.

He said: “I don’t think 2-0 was a true reflection to be honest, I think we had goal scoring opportunities ourselves.

“I’m disappointed with the fact we conceded a number of free-kicks in areas we shouldn’t be conceding them, and that is because we were sloppy in the second half.

“It was almost as if we felt we had done the job in the first half and we came out in the second half without the discipline.

“When you play against sides like Charlton they punish you.

“We forced ourselves to give away free-kicks on the edge of the box because we were sloppy in other areas and we’ve just got to get that out of our game.

“But I would rather get it out of our game now than when the season actually starts. The goal gave Charlton confidence but other than that we had chances.

“In the first half we had at least three good goal scoring opportunities and in the second half Mike Jones had a wonderful chance where he just put it wide and Sanchez Ming had a chance right at the end where he could have squared it to Bradley Goldberg to put it in the net.

“In fairness nobody would have argued if we had scored two ourselves.”

Goldberg added: “In the first half our work out wide was excellent and our full backs over lapping really was effective.

“But where we weren’t effective was through the middle, we weren’t trusting our forwards to play it to their feet.

“Everything we did was from wide and in the second half we wanted to try and put that right.

“At times we did produce some good interplay around and in front of their penalty area and we did get into goal scoring opportunities, but at the same we were sloppy which allowed us to concede the goals which then gave them the confidence.

“It appeared the second half was more Charlton than Bromley but actually I wasn’t too disappointed other than with the goals we conceded.”

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