FIFTY YEARS A REBEL

Published in the Southern League Premier Division game v Chesham United on Boxing Day 2015 - my 50th birthday. We lost 1-0 in front of 438, best home gate of the season, and one terrible game!

Today I celebrate 50 years on this planet and it is fair to say that apart from my family the one constant in much of those years is Slough Town Football Club. 

 

Since my dad first took me to Wexham Park when somehow eight thousand people crammed in to watch Slough U15's lose to Liverpool in a 1975 final; to buying my first season ticket for just £12, my first away game to Carshalton in the FA Cup where I remember my dad telling Chris Sliski he'd better look after me! Too late, I was bitten by the football bug and it soon became a ritual to go to every home and away game jumping on the coach opposite The George on Farnham Road. I went to school with Terry Reardons relatives and remember wearing my Slough Town scarf all day at school after we had beaten Sutton United and won the Isthmian League (but no promotion to the Conference in those pre-football pryamid days). We all piled into the players tunnel and I nearly passed out in the crush. I played (well was mainly a crap unused sub) for Crusaders who were coached by a certain long-haired Brain McDermott. The whole team used to go to home games and join in the massive half time football matches behind the far goal. I even 'helped' build some of the terraces on the Sunday morning sessions.

As I got older and became a rather too frequent visitor of the Wheatsheaf Pub, we organised coaches to many of the bigger games – arriving so late at the Wycombe game most had to watch from the hill while a few of us jumped over the fences to watch the biggest Conference league attendance at the time. The late night lock in after we drew 3-3 with Reading in the FA Cup scoring twice in injury time to equalise. That crazy journey home after we beat Bromley in the League. Our first Conference promotion season, when we were full of excitement, only to see us get beaten 6-1 away to Barnet in our first away game. Seeing our worst ever league defeat, getting battered 9-0 by AFC Wimbledon but our non stop singing lifting us to legendary status in a season of horrors. But the following season was even worse when we should have been relegated to the Dog and Duck.

Moving to Brighton nearly 25 years ago, you'd have thought I would have shaken the Slough Town bug' but after falling out of love with football I started watching local teams until I started going once again home and away. After endless play-off heartache we finally got the promotion we craved, with that fantastic second half fight back against Kettering. The celebrations in the Herschel afterwards will live long in the memory (well, what I can remember will). Recently i've been attending and speaking at far too many Rebel funerals – including Mr. Slough Town Chris Sliski, who I still expect to see at games and who I hope will be remebered when we move to our new ground.

This is the first season in ages that I haven't got a season ticket and what with work, our community pub and two growing children have found it hard to cheer on the Rebels as much as I'd like. But they remain my team, my family of football friends. Not the sort of family you'd invite round for Christmas dinner, but one that i'd be happy to spend the next 50 years cheering on the Rebels in sickness and in health.