Well beaten by Woking last night even though the score was only 1-0. They looked a class apart from Maidenhead and I would imagine it would have been clear to a neutral which team which was aspiring to the play offs and which was battling relegation.
Garry Hill seems to have invigorated Woking and with the incentive of last season's play off final disappointment they look a really good bet for promotion.
As for Maidenhead on the positive side the players continue to work hard to remain in contention for points but every defeat must sap the confidence that little bit further. This is nothing like Carl Taylor's relegation season when twice as much money produced heavy defeats week in week out, nevertheless the corner that needs to be turned is still nowhere to be found.
Matters have been made worse by Mark Nisbet's dismissal. With him on the pitch the defence looked capable of holding firm, he will now presumably receive a three match ban starting in a fortnight inconveniently timed to coincide with fellow defender Jamal Fyfield's return to York at the end of his loan.
The fixture list is also taking a bizarre turn, six out of the next seven league fixtures are at home (there are also two other home games during this period), followed by four away games. As with the 1997/98 it could well be that two late seasons games against Hampton could well seal the fate of both clubs although this time relegation rather than promotion is at stake.
An odd postscript (which ironically prevented one) was the referee's decision to reduce the stoppage time to 100 seconds after initially indicating five minutes which seemed reasonable given a half which included five substitutions, a protracted goal celebration and foul/handbags/double sending off incident which itself must have taken two minutes to sort out. Still as one Woking fan pointed out the extra time could have increased the score to 2-0 and made United's goal difference even worse!
I also spent some time yesterday at the Hammersmith and Fulham archive doing some research for Mark Smith's latest edition of Maidenhead United's history. I was specifically looking for details of Maidenhead's games against Shepherd's Bush at the turn of the twentieth century. Maidenhead were regular visitors to West London at this time and at least one of the games was played at Loftus Road, presumably on the same site as the current QPR ground. I was really lucky to find this information as the centre will be permanently closed next week as part of the cultural vandalism being wreaked on the borough by the local council whose shock doctrine philosophy views even David Cameron with suspicion as a dangerous pinko liberal.
