SLOUGH TOWN v PLYMOUTH ARGYLE, November, 1995...

Sacred Spirit In Slough...

Oddly, this game took place on Remembrance Day, November 11th, in 1995. I drove along the M40 to watch Plymouth Argyle’s FA Cup Round 1 match at Slough Town’s Wexham Park Stadium against the Rebels. HMV had been advertising an audio cassette on TV, which was called ‘Sacred Spirit’, a collection of Native American Indian music and chants and I had bought one. I still have no idea why. Maybe the strange, muted mumblings reminded me of the sad Small Heath fans at St Andrews…

As the strange compilation filled my car with rhythms of the kind which unsettle, rather than excite, rain sprayed onto and around my vehicle and as the haunting sounds began to spook me slightly, a distant mist began to shroud the motorway. Through this murky atmosphere, I could just make out a silhouette on horseback crossing a footbridge across the highway and this vision, combined with the audibles, offered a surreal image and a concern that the result of the game would be in the hands of Apache ancestors.

Barry Davies, covering the game for the BBC, walked across to his commentary position, I took my seat in the grandstand and then I noticed him: Lee Harvey of Slough Town, warming up. He was tall, possessed fiery eyes and long, flowing hair, but he was also wearing an Apache headband; this man was a Brave. My resolve was strained again. The Pilgrims’ fans chanted their own sacred songs of praise for their Christian soldiers and they, of course could turn to midfield outlaw Ronnie Mauge, always one step ahead of the posse, whose special chant was: “Ronnie’s got a gun, he’s got a gun, he’s got a…”

Apache Lee 'Fierce Glare' Harvey...

The early stages of the conflict on the Reservation saw the Apache in the ascendancy, their bad medicine affecting Argyle’s Gary Clayton’s ball control, which became ‘crazy horse’ under their spiritual influence. Mauge bellowed at his gang, Chris Leadbitter seemed bemused, as if trading with the itinerant Doctor Duclamara, purveyor of elixirs and tonics, Chris Billy bucked and stampeded like an unbroken horse and the players returned to their tepees and wagons either to smoke pipes and wail, or to chew baccy, gob wide of the spittoons provided and drink sarsaparilla. Around the hour mark however, Billy the Kid delivered the goods like he was the Pony Express and ‘Harvey Fierce Glare’ sliced the ball into his own net. Had the Apache warrior been lassoed by a Pilgrim rope? He then beat the ground in frustration, as if he’d had his quiver nicked. 

The Braves were then exposed by outrider Adrian Littlejohn’s pace and outsmarted by Sheriff Michael Heathcote, who buckled his holster and rifled home a header, which flew unerringly into the Slough wigwam, following Leadbitter’s free-kick. The small Reservation then spun madly into chaos, like frenzied worship around a totem pole but Pilgrim Paul Williams scouted the defensive flanks with speed and guile, although his gang didn’t exactly park the wagons to defend their advantage. Sheriff Heathcote did make one or two rash decisions late on and the Rebels went close to scoring when Barry Rake dragged an agricultural header wide of an Argyle tent pole.

Sheriff Heathcote heads goal 2...

The Pilgrims praise themselves...

Plymouth’s own shaman, ‘Pilgrim Pete’, a graven image if ever I saw one, had scored a pre-match, warm-up penalty into the net which would accept both of Argyle’s second period goals, thus almost certainly temporarily exorcising adverse spirits from the goal. That bad medicine must surely have returned however, when Michael ‘Good’ Evans, the heroic and persistent Pilgrim footsoldier, raced in on goal, only to fall over, like he had been struck by a spear, with home goalie Delroy Preddie and the net at his mercy. The Apache had lost to Neil Warnock’s prospectors and they probably retired to The Feathers on Taplow Common Road, to lick their wounds and sharpen their arrows.

Pilgrim follower and politician Michael Foot, whose middle name was Mackintosh, in case it rained, was also present at the game, looking rather like one of those salesmen of elixirs and tonics, with his wild hair and socialist, persuasive oratory skills. It was just a pity that Dwight Marshall wasn’t in the Pilgrims’ ranks that day…

The BBC didn’t get their ‘giant killing’, the Rebels had been tamed and the Pilgrims marched onward…

I would never visit the Wexham Reservation again…

Congratulations on the promotion you Rebels!

Note the crowds...
And which teams are in the league...