STEP 2 IS TOUGH RECIPE – BAKER
... but Rebels aim to shock
SLOUGH Town joint boss Neil Baker says they won’t be overawed by the National League South next season but warns it is shaping up to be the toughest division yet.
The Rebels won promotion via the Southern League playoffs thanks to Manny Williams’ last-minute winner against King’s Lynn. It returned them to the highest level of the pyramid the club has operated at since they were famously demoted from the Conference in 1998 despite finishing in eighth place.
Last season also saw a memorable run to the FA Cup second round, where they hosted Rochdale of League One live on BT Sport and the third round draw.
“It was a season we won’t forget in a long time,” Baker told The NLP. “Normally you don’t have an FA Cup run and a promotion.
“We got 99 points and scored 152 goals in all competitions. We had probably a six-week spell after we went out against Rochdale where we went off the boil a bit. Possibly if we hadn’t had that, we might have pushed Hereford all the way but it was a fantastic league. Any two of the top five could have been promoted and there wouldn’t have been any arguments.
Concentrate
“That’s now firmly in the background and we have to concentrate on what is probably the toughest Conference South for many a year.”
Their swish new Arbour Park home, opened in 2016 and equipped with a 3G pitch, has provided the infrastructure for the club to be sustainable at the top end of the Pyramid, but their success has stemmed from Baker and Jon Underwood’s managerial partnership.
The duo celebrated five years in charge of the club last month and in that time two promotions have been achieved along with a clubbest FA Cup run to the second round.
In seven seasons, the former Godalming duo have reached the play-offs five times but Baker, right, isn’t making any promises for this campaign.
“We’re not daunted by Step 2 but you have to be careful when you come up not to be too bullish or anything like that,” he said.
“We haven’t done an awful lot to our side. We felt that we had predominantly a Conference South side last season and the players have earnt that opportunity to give it a
go.
Opportunity
“With the likes of Torquay and Woking coming down, Billericay and Dulwich coming up and other sides looking to strengthen, it is going to be tough. Concord Rangers have been making a lot of noise about their signings. I think it is going to be a really competitive league.
“There’ll be a lot of sides who don’t know an awful lot about us and hopefully we might surprise one or two.
“We haven’t managed at Step 2 but we hadn’t managed at Step 3 or 4 either. You’ve got to start at some point and we know we’ll work hard to make sure we can compete.
“As a club, we can look at someone like Maidenhead, one of our local rivals. They were predominantly in the lower half of Conference South, with crowds of 500 or 600 – ours were better than theirs at the time.
“You look at them now, they had an amazing season when they were promoted, their crowds have gone up and up and they’ve backed it up with another really good season in the Conference. We can aspire to get to the same level. It might take time but hopefully we’ve got the time to do that.”