THE CAMPAIGN STARTS HERE

Printed in the National League South v Dorking Wanderers Saturday 3^rd August 2019. First game of the season. We lost 1-0 in the last few seconds of the game in front of 874.

 

It was a fitting end to the Steve Easterbrook regime, with the last home game of the season against Eastbourne feeling like a mini festival. The BobStock music extravaganza that happens annually at the Wheatsheaf Pub and the May Bank Holiday always signals a home coming of Slough ex-pats who now make Arbour Park part of their pilgrimage. Many of these ageing rockers must have mobility problems as they seem unable to leave the comfort of the tables near the bar overlooking the pitch. Add in the sunny weather and the fact that Slough still had a slim mathematical-headache of a chance of reaching the play-offs and it was a corker of a day.

Is there anything more important than football? Of course, but nothing can stir the emotions, get the heart pumping, and bring people together like watching a kick about at Arbour Park.

When our new stadium opened I spent the first few months standing in disbelief pinching myself that it had finally happened. Watching Slough in the wilderness years was hard work. Homeless, hopeless, it at least bred a black humored camaraderie of those that stuck with it. I was ready to write a book about one of our seasons of horror until my first born came along. Then we turned a corner; four play-off defeats until finally that day and night after beating Kettering, celebrating till the early hours in one of Sloughs backstreet pubs. The intimacy, the sheer pleasure that we had actually finally fucking done it.

Masterminding all this was Steve Easterbrook. Slowly rebuilding the club with a dedicated dads army of volunteers. Like the mild mannered janitor Steve preferred a broom to the board room but underneath he's as sharp a businessman as they come. With Steve stepping down as chairman, he can be proud that he leaves the Rebels playing back in the town, with rising crowds, playing attractive football with two smart managers and a whole host of community activities. We even won the Berks and Bucks Cup for the first time since the Boer War.

I've weaned myself off football forums and never listen to football radio shows. They mimic the black and white political bluster in this country, when it's usually a bit more complicated than that. Because what binds the fans can also blind them. They stick up for their club more than they would their spouses.

One Crewe fan walked away after the child abuse allegations surfaced at the club he loved because too many fans rounded on the accusers rather than the accused. This football brand blindness is something the owners of Manchester City were banking on, with many of their supporters the new cheerleaders for the Abu Dhabi regime. A regime that doesn’t think twice about disappearing and torturing anyone who expresses either a favourable view of democracy or an unfavourable view of their family’s rule. Sportswashing is as good a term as any, using Manchester City to cover up their bloody autocratic regime.

If they think nothing of ignoring human rights then they are hardly going to care about any financial rules. In November 2018 German magazine Der Spiegel, based on a treasure trove of emails obtained and released by whistle-blowing organisation Football Leaks, revealed evidence that Manchester City had cooked the books and funnelled millions of pounds into the club by stealth, in violation of UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations. Der Spiegel also detailed how City worked behind the scenes to avoid any meaningful sanction. According to an email written by City’s lawyer, “(They) would rather spend 30 million on the 50 best lawyers in the world to sue them [UEFA] for the next 10 years” and raised the spectre of “the destruction of their rules and organization.”

One person who fully understands the destructive (and constructive) potential of the bonds between supporters and clubs is Dr.Martha Newson a researcher on cognitive anthropology whose studied football fans. 'Identity fusion' is the catchy description of “family-like bonds” which make people stick up for each other come what may.

Which brings me neatly on to why I should be Prime Minister of England. OK unlike twenty of our former and now current (God help us) Prime Ministers, I never went to Eton but my connection and aristocratic veins run deep. I used to skip across the Eton playing fields on my way from Slough to drink in Windsor and would often fall asleep in their gardens, intoxicated by their hollyhocks. I played a game of football against them when I was at school and my mum now lives in Eton. Well, Eton Wick. I can make grandiose statements although unlike the PM or the majority of the cabinet I have never been sacked from a job. Mainly cos I work for myself.

When elected I will wear my Slough Town top with pride in the dispatches box and one of my first acts, apart from making people support the club where they were born, would be to establish financial fair play rules which mean something, and doesn't reward clubs for the over spending that currently sees so many on the verge of collapse. Blustering Boris Johnson type football chairman promising the earth will be relegated to the Not Fit and Proper East Berkshire Dog Food Division Eight, and made to clean the toilets with discarded Man United scarves.

The campaign starts here.

* Highly recommend Trollerball article by Nicholas McGeehan about the pleasant people behind Man City