ZEN FOOTBALL

 

Printed in the National League South game v Yeovil Town Saturday 16th March 2024  We drew 0-0 in front of 1533

Blimey just were to begin….

Well let’s start by saying that one of the really enjoyable things about this season is there’s no pressure.

Once any threat of relegation had eased, the only way was up – and no one gave us a cat in hells chance of being within touching distance of the play offs.

So now we can watch games in a Zen like state – assuming Budhists drink and don’t get distracted by hundred miles an hour heavy metal football. So but we shake our bells and rattle tambouries like some relgious ritual to ward off ever losing at home again.

It’s been an eventful couple of weeks – culminating in the Bath City manager refusing to let his players go back on the pitch cos they’d been such a big pause, two of his players had ingrown toenails. Anyone would think he’d never heard of half time and keeps his players jogging round the pitch rather than resting.

The fact that the guy who fainted was ok, sitting up in the physio room and speaking to his wife didn’t matter to him. Bath still trailing by two goals and with just one sub on the bench mattered a whole lot more.

A few years back, when our goal keeper Mark Scott suffered a broken neck their was an ambulance on the pitch and a lengthy delay. Slough didn’t even have a stand in keeper so one of our outfield players went in goal but the game restarted.

As people shuffled out the ground, it left a sour taste on what was just a brilliant day – yes we had put in one the best first half performances I can remember in front of our biggest home league crowd for six years but it was more than that.

Talking to a clearly deflated Ade who had spent months helping pull the day together the big fundraising day for Thames Hospice just made me angrier – the Bath fans were good as gold but I hope their club choke on their play off ambitions and their manager is made to scrub that Twerton Park outside toilet block for the rest of eternity.

So can we do it? At the Dartford game I said to some of their supporters that I didn’t want promotion – and they asked if that showed a lack of ambition. Maybe, but also a sense of realism of what it would entail. But also how you measure ambition. I measure our community pub not just in the pints poured and the cash through the tills – just as well given our recent circumstances - but how we can bring people together and change lives. I got chatting to one lady after our Friday seniors club. Struggling with her health, she said it’s the only time she leaves the house and spends the rest of the time home alone, never seeing another human just speaking to her dog. She’s started to stay a bit later and likes to laugh and joke with everyone and in a short space of time everyone knows her name. The other day when her cab didn’t show, one of the regulars whizzed her in his car home.

So what’s that got to do with football? To my mind, ambition for Slough Town means increasing crowds and their diversity, becoming the number one place that people meet in a town that has the least places to go for a pint or a dance – using that negative as an opportunity (Christ, I sound like one of those Amerian self help word soup gurus). More teams under the Rebels umbrella, players coming through the ranks to the first team and beyond. Improving the stadium so we can actually see behind the goals. I know ultimately everything for football teams gets measured on the pitch but you have to have the infrastruture, the support to push on so when times are hard you have a loyalty that sticks with you. A football club that is more than just about ninety minutes on the pitch, that needs to continually generate income and support the team when things aren’t going so well.

The Bath City game was the culmination of all that is good about the club, about doing things the right way. Yes winning is fun but meeting mates and having a good laugh, well that too me is also what its all about. And showing a bit more class than some we won’t mention. I reckon that matters as well.