REBELS WITHOUT A CAUSE
Slough shine but Cup dream dies
AT half-time they were dreaming big in the Slough Town dressing room, and with good reason. Making light of a 68-place gap in league positions, the team known as the Rebels were all over gillingham and it seemed that their eighth time might be lucky in winning a second-round tie in the Fa Cup proper.
‘You dream of those games at Old Trafford, anfield, Wembley,’ reflected Slough’s joint manager Jon Underwood. ‘We could have that opportunity if the ball had run a bit differently for us today. I was going to be watching the third-round draw but I don’t think I will now.’
It was all ruined by a 35-yard sidewinder delivered just after the break by the visitors’ 19-year-old midfielder Darren Oldaker, and the League One side just about held on from there.
Slough kept coming after that, a decent finish the only thing preventing them from being in the hat tonight. It is the second successive year that they have fallen short at this stage, although the two runs have been worth the best part of £300,000.
You could only feel well-disposed towards Slough, certainly more generous than Sir John Betjeman did in the poem he once wrote about this resolutely unfashionable Berkshire town.
‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough! It isn’t fit for humans now,’ are the opening lines, and it does not get more charitable after that. YET Slough’s neatly appointed ground hardly fits that stereotype, and nor does the community feel about the place. The area is very much on the up, partly due to the arrival of Crossrail.
There is certainly nothing ugly about the football played by the team that represents the locality. They should be going places, too.
On the pitch their passing game was a pleasure to watch, and as they frequently embarrassed their loftier opposition one wondered why they are not higher than mid-table in the National League South.
Being used to their 3g surface probably confers a slight advantage, but there was an unmistakable quality on show, with the gills often struggling to contain the left-sided duo of george Wells and
James ames Dobson Dobson. scott Davies, Davies a reformed gambling addict who now advises footballers on avoiding the traps he fell into, largely orchestrated matters fromcentral midfield.
Matt stevens, a former national age-group boxing champion on o loan from Peterborough, was a constant threat up front.
In defence they barely allowed Tom Eaves, prolific this season in League One with 12 goals, to get into the game. slough registered 22 shots to Gillingham’s six, but none of them had the potency of Oldaker’s viciously dipping 48th-minute strike.
That was one of the few moments when the travelling support from Kent’s only professional side, swelling the attendance to just over 2,000, could breathe easily.
It was not that their gargantuan Czech goalkeeper, 6ft 9in Tomas Holy, had too many saves to make, but he was far more occupied than his relatively diminutive opposite number Jack Turner.
After so many half- chances it seemed the injury-time siege would yield an equaliser when Holy spilled a shot from Davies, but in the ensuing melee stevens could not quite make meaningful enough contact.
A relieved Gillingham manager steve Lovell joked afterwards: ‘We should have won 10-0,’ before adding more seriously, ‘I told them that was one of the hardest games we have been given all season. They were excellent and all credit to them. But you come to a place like this on a hiding to nothing and we dug in and defended well.’
They will be in the third round for the first time since 2012, while the adventure ends for undeserving slough, whose next stop is Dartford.