These articles are published in the Slough Town FC programme. The Rebels play in the National League South in a swanky new ground. I’ve been supporting Slough since the beginning of time despite now living in Brighton.

Tuesday, December 06, 2022

BEHIND THE AMBER AND BLUE

Printed in the National League South game v Concord Rangers Tuesday 6th December 2022  We drew 0-0 in front of just 307



We haven’t had this feeling for over a decade. Not since Steve Easterbrook was introduced after a game in the clubhouse at Beaconsfield as the new chairman. From that moment the Rebels fortunes finally began to change.


Before that we had been a basket case. We lost our Wexham Park stadium and moved to Windsor then Beaconsfield sliding down the leagues and shedding supporters while neighbouring village teams enjoyed putting one over us. One Slough councillor in a show of civic pride said we should merge with Windsor. With their current problems, maybe Slough Council should have done that instead.


Steve Easterbrook is a quiet, unassuming man who preferred mopping the floor rather being in the director's room, but he is also a smart businessman who saw the potential in two men. Jon Underwood and Neil Baker would become our joint managers and spend nearly 10 years at the club, where after fantastic FA Cup runs and two promotion games at Kettering and Kings Lynn we settled as a decent, established National League South side.


But in football, as in life, all good things must come to an end and reflecting on the end of season awards bash you could sense our former joint managers questioning whether their time at the club was over. With our current financial limitations, we could never match their ambition of managing in the National League.


Just like thousands of other lower league football clubs up and down the country, Slough Town isn’t a viable business – it relies on the goodwill and hundreds of free hours supporters put in over a season to make the club tick. They do it because they support their team, and watching live football in an age of isolation, brings a sense of belonging and an emotional roller-coaster you won’t get from shopping or logging onto Facebook (well you might get the rush if your shoplifting). This is something our former managers tapped into, always having time for fans, reaching out to those when they needed support. As Jon Underwood put it “The fans always had our backs so it’s only right we were there for you guys too.”


Slough is blessed with a lot of volunteers and although it could always do with more, it always seems to have new ones that are welcomed aboard rather than shunned by cliques that have seen the death of so many Workingmens Clubs and Village halls as they fail to embrace new ways of working and peoples changing habits. The fatal ‘we’ve always done it like that’ meat-raffle mentality.


But football clubs need leaders, people who cut through the day-to-day noise and have a strategic vision. Steve Easterbrook had that in bucketfuls.


I’m not here to criticise, as someone who is chair of a community pub, I know how much work people put in behind the scenes for little thanks and a lot of earache when things go wrong. But the recent statement from the club didn’t say very much we didn’t already know. Keeping stum means instead we get leaks and whispers which undermine any organisation over time and destroy goodwill.


I also get that statement said we need to get more people through the turnstiles on matchdays to increase income but doing the same things that has seen our crowds fall dramatically, isn’t going to do that. Losing every week won’t improve matters much either!


On the pitch I think we’ve once again landed on our feet with Scott Davies and Lee Togwell who understand the club and have the footballing contacts to hopefully help us with, what we all know, is a second half of the season relegation battle.


That 5-1 home demolition by Eastbourne was a rude awakening, but supporters are still onside and carrying on banging the drum for the team. At Ebbsfleet we fought hard despite our already threadbare squad being hit with suspensions, departures and illness. With one Fleet supporter telling us that their owner wrote off the clubs £2.5 million debt last season. Just how are we meant to compete against those financial odds?


So are there new people to help the club? Ones with deep pockets or ones with the passion to embrace and tap into the wealth of Slough? That can see the towns melting pot of different creeds and colours as potential supporters and find a way to get them to unite behind the amber and blue.




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