Scott Davies frustrated and 'sick' as controversial decisions go against Slough Town

Scott Davies admitted he felt ‘sick’ after a series of controversial decisions went against the Rebels in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat to Maidstone United.

The player/manager felt his side had the better of the opening 45 minutes but weren’t given a fair crack of the whip from the referee whose decisions enabled the hosts to get themselves back on an even footing and then go on and win the game.

Maidstone will be one of the sides most fancied for promotion this season, however, the Rebels edged the opening 40 minutes and took a deserved lead through Johnny Goddard’s deflected shot. However, any semblance of control Davies felt his side might have had began to slip away when Maidstone were awarded a penalty for a handball by new signing Jeanmal Prosper.

Sol Wanjau-Smith stepped up to slot his side level before the interval before another of Slough’s new signings Dan Bayliss saw red in the second half for a foul on Wanjau-Smith, another decision which Davies felt altered the course of the game.

“I feel sick right now,” Davies told Connor McNeish for sloughtownfc.net. “I’m not bitter, and I’ll be over it by the morning, but you can do with a helping hand sometimes, and I don’t think we got that today.

“My frustration is that we’ve come away from home, against a side that’s fancied to be up at the top of the league, and nothing has gone for us.

“I probably shouldn’t talk about the handball, but it is never a handball is it. We’ve lost a game of football, and credit to Maidstone, but if that’s a handball we’re in trouble. It’s not a handball, they haven’t claimed for it. He’s headed it down towards Jeanmal’s hand and it’s not even going towards the goal.

“The game has gone crazy, and I hate the game at the moment and the rules. It’s been ruined. The red card I’ll have to look back on. Listen, I know that Dan has pushed him, and I might look back at that one and say, ‘it’s not an issue, it’s a red card’, but the handball is never a handball.

“We’d have been buzzing to have come off at half-time 1-0 up and it would have allowed us to control the second half, but we weren’t given that choice. But we have a bunch of lads that aren’t going to lie down. They’re going to fight and scrap and show moments of quality, but they’ll also make mistakes.”

Having fallen behind to Reiss Greenidge’s close-range finish in the 61st minute – just a few minutes after Bayliss’ dismissal – Slough’s best route back into the game came from set pieces, but they were another source of frustration for the Rebels’ manager.

“I think for 45 minutes I felt comfortable,” he said. “I thought the game plan was working, and we knew they’d try to step onto us at home. They had to. The red card is everything. After that I knew it would be tough. My frustration is that we kept them at bay for the whole of the second half apart from that one set piece.

“MY other frustration is that when we had corners and set pieces in the second half, the boys just did their own thing. I’ll always back them and they did their own thing, but set pieces are a great chance to get back into the game. We worked on them on Thursday night and then people decided to take it into their own hands. They are the chances you get when you’re down to 10 men so you must take them seriously.

“I feel sick right now, but the performance overall, we gave absolutely everything. There are no bad words for the boys, I’ll always back them, I’m just gutted at the moment.”