Hemel Hempstead 1 Slough Town 1
With a free Saturday for WW I ventured down the road to have a look at how the National League promotion race is shaping up as Hemel Hempstead Town took on title challengers Slough Town at Vauxhall Road.
Still smarting after their Boxing Day defeat at arch-rivals St Albans City, Hemel were very competitive from the off. However, their 4-2-3-1 formation didn’t allow them to put any concerted pressure on the Rebels’ defence.
It was the home side who took the lead on the half-hour as #11 Ashford curled a lovely left-footed shot into the far corner. Slough battled back & right on half-time Dan Roberts glanced a beautiful cross into the far corner of the net.
It was all set up for a real battle in the second-half but both sides tended to cancel each other out in midfield. In the last 10 minutes Slough piled on the pressure but couldn’t quite find the finish to take all 3 points. Interesting to see Ryan Bird now playing at centre-half for Slough.
Slough have some good players, especially down the flanks and they try to play nice football. Hemel don’t. A very poor crowd of 589 watched the match - about half of whom were from Slough. But with Watford playing Aston Villa in front of a full-house just down the road what more do you expect?