Slough 0 v City 0 full time

Straker and Hinds start. No Morton or Brunt. Rigg on 4 man bench.
Sounds like hard earned point. Good discipline to finish with 11 on pitch. Hinds sounded lively and good to see Rigg back.

Where’s Michee? Don’t say we weren’t able to renew his loan from Maidstone?

At this rate we will be undone by a string of suspensions.

The ref must live around the Torquay area

Overall relieved, but we really did have good chances to win it. Hinds sounded lively.

At 3 o’clock on Saturday I would have settled for 4 points from these 2 away games so job done I think. I did wonder if perhaps we might ‘hit the buffers’ this evening after so many games recently with such a small squad so all credit to them.

We are now sitting 3rd with a 4 point gap over St Albans in 8th, but it is still very close and there are a lot of points to play for yet. Having said that I think most of us would have settled for being where we are one week into 2019.

Hopefully we can keep the momentum going against East Thurrock to set things up for the Torquay game.

Interview with Jerry says that Michee has gone to Billericay on a Beal for rest of this season and next. Gutted, but we all know that’s the risk if players perform well.

Billericay have found some money down the back of the sofa then?

Michee has been travelling from London tbf so it suits him better.

He lives in Hackney and 40 minutes drive to Billericay....can't blame him.
I understand that Billericay still have a £10k per week playing budget and are now part-time....so still a good budget for this level.
I hope we can get a new right back/wing back in asap....since Joe Raynes had moved to midfield we have been class....would be a water to have him back in defence.

I don't usually criticise the match officials but last night's looked out of their depth. From the ko it was clear that the home management team were going to 'work' the assistant running the line in front of them and he frequently flagged following their appeals for offside in the first half.

That first 45 minutes was probably the most disjointed I've watched in years with the ref seemingly intent on disrupting the flow of the game. Whether some of our yellow cards were deserved is debatable, but his refusal to even speak to their number 9 following at least 5 fouls was incredible. He seemed to be more even handed in his decisions after half time with both teams suffering and his decision to rightly award us a free kick after initially giving it to Slough was baffling. It was amusing to see the home duo in the dug out go ballistic at this plus the loud mouthed home fan in the stand who had spent most of the game attempting to wind us up.

So not a great game, but another clean sheet and we were dominant in the last twenty minutes. Hinds looks lightning quick and could easily have bagged a couple, foiled by the post and an excellent save by their keeper.

I think Kevin's report and Martin's observations are a good summary of the Slough game.

I think the fact that of the 6 bookings 4 were to keeper and defenders in the first 30 minutes meant they were under additional pressure from a trigger happy referee throughout the rest of the game. I noticed that virtually every time Robbie Cundy was forward for a set play one of the Slough players would complain to the referee about the challenge. Presumably trying to influence the referee to give him a 2nd yellow. Maybe the referee eventually cottoned on to this aspect because I thought Robbie Cundy was involved on the apparent change of decision that Martin mentioned.

I was convinced we would not finish with 11 players so great credit to our players who were on a booking to remain competitive for the remainder of the game. Also a mention for Frankie Artus who is prone to receive the odd booking to avoid one altogether.

Agreed, and also credit to Jerry and Jim who managed to keep their frustration under control. And how they managed to ignore MegaGob sat just a few rows behind them was equally commendable!

Scott Davies threw himself to the floor holding his face in the second half a few yards from us when we won a free kick. Bizarre.

I didn’t press Jerry about the officials as didn’t fancy landing him in trouble. Could have replicated the infamous Adie interview all those years ago. ‘Will you be going for a drink with them after the game?’ ‘No, not at all. None of them.’