“There’s something special about non-league” Scott Davies and Slough Town are prepare for FA Cup showdown – Football in Berkshire

As Slough Town prepare to host Macclesfield in the FA Cup Second Round Proper on Sunday, live on TNT Sports 2, Football in Berkshire sat down with boss Scott Davies and some of the club’s long-serving supporters for an overview of where the club is at.

The FA Cup tie see’s two Step 2 sides clash with a place in the Third Round at stake. Should Slough emerge victorious, it would be the Rebels first appearance at that stage.

A condensed version of this interview appeared in the Berkshire special issue 458 of When Saturday Comes magazine.

It’s hard to make a case for Berkshire as a footballing hot-bed. The ownership trials of Reading Football Club aside, it’s not traditionally a county that makes national headlines, footballing or otherwise.

Could that be changing? From zero finalists in the first 43 years of the FA Vase to three, including two wins since 2018, four teams in the top three tiers of the English Football Pyramid and a talent conveyor belt that is lighting up the professional game.

Slough Town certainly make a solid case. The Rebels were footballing nomads, on the brink of Step 5 football and ground-sharing at historic rivals Windsor & Eton and Beaconsfield Town in Buckinghamshire through the 1990s and early 2000s before a return to a purpose-built, community-owned stadium in 2016 and the National League in 2018.

In recent years the club has become a finishing school for young non-league players hoping to get into full-time football and in player/managed Scott Davies, have successfully avoided the pitfalls that following a history defining managerial era the likes of David Moyes at Manchester United and Unai Emery at Arsenal didn’t

Ex Republic of Ireland midfielder Davies is hugely proud of the clubs roll in developing players with Slavi Spasov (Oxford United), David Ogbonna (Sutton United) and Leon Chambers-Parillon (Southend United) among the class of 2025 moving into full time football.

“I didn’t understand how it would feel and the satisfaction you would take from it, but now we’ve helped a large number of players on to bigger and better things, becoming professional footballers, has been brilliant. It’s one of the best text messages you can ever receive from one of the lads saying ‘thank you for everything, you’ve been brilliant with us,’ says Davies.

Talking to Davies at the start of the summer you realise how much work a manager has to put in to get a side ready. Even before the last ball is kicked, he was on the phone lining players up, but it’s part and parcel of the game for a young manager who had 11 years as a pro himself with the likes of Reading and Wycombe Wanderers.

“It’s difficult losing your best players every year but we have to understand and realise where we are as a club, we can’t offer them full time football, so you have to work at it,” Davies explains. “Developing young players is something I’ve always kept an eye on, I’m forever scouting matches, watching YouTube, scrolling social media, seeing if there’s players out there from Step 6 upwards, trying to give opportunity in the game. which I think is something that doesn’t happen enough and I like to do that. I’m not saying that Step 2 is the be all and end all but for lads coming up from Step 5 it’s almost like the promised land now because the league above is professional football pretty much with almost every club full time. It’s great to be able to develop players and I am forever trying to find the next best one!

In a piece on The Guardian this week with Davies, the former Reading and Wycombe Wanderers midfielder talks about his past and battles with gambling addiction. But what of his future in the game? The player/boss maybe doesn’t have quite the response you’d think: “People often ask from a management perspective, do I want to be a full time manager?” he says.

“I don’t know the answer is the truth. Young players out there have the aspirations to be a Professional Footballer, but I think having been in it for so long, well, 11 years as a full time professional, it’s something I have experienced and I actually really enjoy non-league football. 

“There’s something special about non-league that I think I would miss if I ever went into the professional game as a manager so it’s not my be all and end all. There is a bit of me that would like to manage at a higher level of course, it will sound cringey and cliched but I’d love that to be with Slough, get them to the National League. That would be a real accomplishment if we could achieve that, but we’re probably a few years off doing it. The amount of money in the National League South at the moment, the size of the clubs, being part-time is definitely to our detriment and it is really difficult to jump above some of these big-hitters but I think the people at the helm and on the board are doing a fantastic job.

“I look at Slough and it’s the perfect recipe for if there is going to be success . I know how hard [chairman] Ash and the directors work to try and make the club the best it can be and it’s a slow process but there’s so much hard work being done every single day.”

Davies of course has played a major part in the Rebels modern success, returning from the brink of regional football to the National League South. The one thing I’ve learned from speaking to Davies over the last year or so though is that he doesn’t get ahead of himself, he is professional in what he does and he has the interests of his team and his club at heart.

Scoring ‘that’ free-kick against Grimsby Town on the tele in the FA Cup two years ago, the plaudits that followed it might have knocked things off course. In the recent Guardian interview he said when the Dunstable team bus drove past the Madejski Stadium for an away game after he’d dropped three divisions to continue playing: “That was a moment of realisation, I remember looking at the ground as I went past it and thinking: ‘What has happened?’ I’m never going to forget that moment.”

Many would consider him then a Slough ‘legend’, Davies disagrees: “I felt like I joined the club when there were a lot of players considered to be legends. I was pretty new to it all. You could go through your Warren Harris’, Mark Nisbet’s, Matt Lench’s and I used to look at them and think christ they’ve been for 200-250 games, I know I’m up to about 260, I hope it comes from a place of being a bit humble but I don’t consider myself to be in that category with those players.

“I know we achieved promotion to the National League South together and I played my part in it, but I don’t know when it happened. It feels like home for sure but I still feel like I’ve got a lot of work left to do.

“I don’t settle for just making up the numbers or killing time. I’ve got massive ambition to do well with this club, I’ve had opportunities to leave in the past from a managerial perspective, which I’ve chosen not to do because I enjoy turning up every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and going to work. It’s been great and the transition throughout from seeing the club when I first joined under Neil Baker and Jon Underwood, and I thought it was brilliant then and I still think it’s brilliant now. I am nowhere near bored of the place and I haven’t lost my hunger and desire to do the best that I can for Slough Town.”

Off the pitch, crowds certainly agree and averages 900. The club remains ambitious, but there was a moment in 2008 when a period in regional Step 5 football looked more likely after finishing in the bottom two of the Southern League South West Division One. A reprieve came when Halifax Town entered administration and were expelled from the National League.

Supporter of 40 years, Scott McNeish explains: “When the results came in confirming relegation, it was a worrying time. It was bad enough being at the bottom of Step 4, but to go down to Step 5 would’ve been a disaster for the club.”

In adversity though came opportunity under new chairman Steve Easterbrook, who put in place a plan to get the club back to Slough, galvanising the supporter base in the process. Smart managerial appointments played a part of course, and in Davies’ managerial predecessors Jon Underwood and Neil Baker, the club had one of its most successful eras winning promotion twice via the play-offs before stabilising in the National League South.

Volunteer Sue Shiel has been running the club shop for 18 years and is a familiar face on matchdays, believes the club is ambitious but pragmatic about the future: “Promotion would be nice but involves a lot more money. We’ve seen so many clubs go up and end up financially ruined, so for me at this moment, doing well in our present league is more than enough.”

Slough Town vs Macclesfield is at 12:30pm on TNT Sports 2 and discovery+