🔗 Share this article

“It’s challenging, demanding, utterly exhausting … but I absolutely love what I do,” remarks Scott Davies, positioned in an vacant locker area waiting for his players to come to training. For the past two years, Davies has been the playing boss of Slough Town who, sitting third bottom of the standings, are the lowest-placed club left in this campaign’s FA Cup.

A Dual Role: Management and Education

Some players are stuck in traffic; training was moved earlier to teatime to make way for a community side’s match. When the session gets under way in bucketing rain, the non-league outfit are using the 3G surface with a junior team. “I always thought I’d love to be a coach of a semi-professional team and have a job on the side,” notes Davies. The veteran has chosen not to participate, instead observing from inside, with a tactics board positioned in front of him.

“We continually emphasize the significance that our role extends beyond coaching: we are mentors, we’re counsellors, we’re father figures,” he states.

The day before, he is at Aylesbury grammar school for his second role. Over the course of 45 minutes, he quietens a lecture theatre of students with a harsh presentation on how a gambling addiction derailed his career as a professional footballer, damaged his connections and brought him to the verge of suicide.

A Career Derailed: The Downward Spiral

After going into rehab a decade past, Davies has been bet-free since and is now an advocate on the risks of gambling. He recounts to pupils how, when he scored a set-piece against Chelsea’s Petr Cech in a pre-season friendly, he believed he had made it. But by then, at age 21, his betting was unmanageable.

The talented midfielder, then featuring in Championship football, was slipping away of training at the first opportunity to visit the bookmakers, often fabricating reasons to leave. When asked by his coach to verify the story, Davies could not. He was not picked by Reading again.

While on loan at Wycombe, Davies was convinced he was on his way to a bigger team. When he learned they had signed someone else, he went to the betting shop and squandered £7,000 in a single day. Subsequently, at a different club, he started betting on his own matches and would disappear into a restroom at the interval to wager. Then, at Oxford United, he would remain awake all night to place bets.

A Moment of Clarity

By the age of his mid-twenties, Davies’s career was in freefall. He fell multiple levels to play for Dunstable. His first game was an away trip that passed his former club’s ground. “It was a sobering moment,” Davies says. “I remember looking at the ground from the bus and thinking: ‘How did I get here?’ I’m never going to forget that moment.”

His coach from that time is now his number two at Slough and the pair have created an atmosphere where players can speak openly about anything, breaking down the barriers of macho culture that were prevalent when Davies was a youth and was afraid to talk his problem.

An Ideal Target: The Vulnerability of Athletes

Each person's story is unique, Davies argues prospective professionals are vulnerable to becoming addicted. Financial means, the spare time, the competitive nature, and the supposed ‘edge’ in sports betting were all elements in his addiction. “When you put all of those things together, you create the perfect customer for a bookmaker.”

Ahead of Sunday’s cup match, Davies is speaking to two professional clubs’ academy sides. “I do feel that there is a moral obligation to safeguard the next generation, the ones that are coming through, and which is why I do the work that I do,” he says.

Looking Ahead and FA Cup Dreams

Now settled, with a family and the father to a young child, Davies is yet to hang up his playing boots and is aiming to start on his Uefa A licence. “There’s a lot of regret but the positive aspect of coming out the other side and moving on to management is that I’m going to right the wrongs of my time as a player.”

Slough have navigated four rounds but have not yet made the next stage of the Cup. Given the financial rewards, drawing a Premier League club in the subsequent stage could bring a financial boost in seven figures for a team whose roster includes tradesmen, fitness coaches and educators.

The prospect of facing managers such as Pep Guardiola is a curious one for Davies. “It's unlikely we would use any complex plans. It would be where you’d be happy to be defeated for the sake of the experience.

“It's amazing to see the small clubs that get paired with some of these giants. Witnessing it and you ask yourself: ‘Someday, could that be us?’”