MAIDSTONE UNITED 2 SLOUGH TOWN 1
It was an interesting afternoon, full of bias-confirming gossip, highly entertaining rumours, moderate social awkwardness and, at the end of it all, a win.
The gossip concerned the fall out from Tuesday night’s “Man City-ing”; the rumours concerned take-overs, the “life-changing” money being offered to players in this league and how long it’ll be before Marc White self-immolates during a half-time team talk; and the awkwardness came shortly before kick-off.
When I first started watching Maidstone United in the late seventies, men who are my age now were old enough to have seen action in World War Two and a minute’s silence meant a minute of silence.
Now “poppy outrage season” starts earlier every year and we have a giant plastic poppy on the gates, the same kind you see on the front of HGVs. As for the ceremony, the bugler tried his best, but there was some tittering. Some people felt the tittering was disrespectful. Another way of looking at it is to say some of those men died so that we might laugh; and to rejoice that we live in a country where we still can. But it all took so long Slough tried to do another warm-up after it had finished.
Just as Tuesday was a bad time to be playing Gravesend (and watch this space on that front …), Saturday was a bad time to be playing Slough, with their newly-installed manager and Kuwaiti-funded new signings. If this lot are bottom it must be a very strong league this year, which just underlines how well we did to stay top of it for so long.
There were two changes: Foran missed out with an injury he picked up on Tuesday night, to be replaced by Lusala, while ASI was preferred to Boateng, with loan signing Nzuzi on the bench.
There were flashes of creativity in the opening half hour, but we looked off it, to the extent that Craig Fagan was getting riled. And in the 39th minute, after he’d yelled at his players to “lift it”, they finally did, with Court playing in Gravata, whose cross was deflected to Charles for a close-range finish.
The equaliser, three minutes after the break, was one we won’t want to see again. Shakpoke shrugged off Fowler and Hvid so easily he might have playing against Man Utd and he beat Holden in a one-on-one. From then on it was tense, with Fagan confessing afterwards he was worried we’d repeat Tuesday’s mistakes, but the winner came eight minutes from time, after a sustained spell of pressure.
Holden launched it long and Leech pressured the defender into knocking it to Nzuzi. He laid it off to Lusala, who squared it for Court. Court just held off two defenders and passed to Hamblin, who surged past two opponents and laid it off to Lusala. He took a touch and played in Leahy, who crossed from the right of the box, where Leech’s diving header was stopped on the line, only for Hanson to tap it in from maybe a foot.
The move involved eight players and for a side lacking experience (the oldest player is 29) we saw out the remaining time fairly comfortably, which was nearly as satisfying.
“They’re a good team and it could have been a sticky game for us today,” Fagan said afterwards. “He’s got them playing different to how they were playing, there’s more belief and you can see it in their group. That was a tough game for us and it took everything. It took people coming off the bench and not sulking about not playing. They’ve really shown that we’re a team today.”
