Rebels want to be ‘more competitive’ in new season

Slough Town boss Jon Underwood has said the club is keen to put last season’s struggles behind them as they look to compete for a top half finish when the new season kicks off later this year.

The Rebels failed to live up to their fifth placed finish from the previous campaign as they languished in the bottom half of the National League South table for much of last season.

They were eventually put out of their misery when clubs voted to curtail the season and null and void results due to a lack of grant funding to continue playing matches behind closed doors. Slough also called for the season to be halted on safety grounds believing it was unsafe for players and club staff to continue mixing and playing matches while COVID-19 infections were rising, and mandatory testing of squads wasn’t in place.

“We’re desperate to have a good season this time,” said Underwood.

“The season we just had has been very difficult for many reasons.

“It was very stop-start, played behind closed doors, and from a results point of view, it wasn’t going how we would’ve hoped having come fifth the previous year.

“We’re looking forward to being more competitive this time around and try and get ourselves in that top half of the league, looking upwards.

“I think it’s going to be a tough season and there are some good clubs in the league who will be strong, but it will be a good challenge to look forward to.

“We’ve just got to make ourselves as competitive as we can be, get the most out of our budget as we can, and hopefully put together a good squad.”

At one stage, while clubs were voting on whether to terminate or continue with the season, Slough refused to play several fixtures, however, they’ve yet to hear if they’ll be sanctioned by the league for this or not.

The season has since been cancelled and declared null and void, a decision that was ratified by the FA’s Council on Friday.

“We haven’t heard a thing,” he said.

“There was a date pencilled in at the end of February when they were supposed to be talking to us about those things, but it’s been very quiet. I’ve not heard anything from anyone at the club about it so I don’t know if it’s something they will come to us with or whether they will write it off.

“I think they put it to one side until they knew how the season would end and now, we know that, and obviously there was that group of teams looking to keep it going with a mini league.

“That’s been turned down now and it is formally done and dusted so you think you might hear something.

“I’ll be very surprised if they came down hard on teams like us. There were several teams in the end that weren’t prepared to play given the situation and I think the wording was always ‘just cause’.

“We feel there was very much that and it was proved by the fact the season ended.

“It wasn’t the right thing to continue, and we stuck our heads up and said it a bit earlier than others.

“That was because we firmly believed that we shouldn’t be carrying on with the financial side and the safety side.

“I think we were proved right in what we did, we could have ended up playing a load more games for nothing because they mean nothing now. They would’ve cost us money and put players at risk.

“There was good reason for us not to play and I think that’s been proved.Hopefully, common sense will prevail so we'll wait and see.”