Slough Town 3 Dover Athletic 2

THOUGH Slough held the upper hand for much of the game, Dover can count themselves unlucky not to have taken at least a point from Windsor & Eton’s Stag Meadow ground on Saturday.

Dover looked to have opened the scoring after two minutes when Paul Armstrong’s flick seemed to have gone at least a foot over Slough’s goal-line. But play was waved on and Slough broke away to immediately register a goal, with Alex Haddow’s effort from an acute angle finding the net.

Soon after, Armstrong’s glancing header produced a brilliant save from Slough’s ‘keeper Shaun Allaway, and the “home” side then went further ahead through Michael Murphy’s 22nd-minute close range effort after Whites had failed to deal with a long throw-in.

The start of the second half saw Slough well in control, and they made it 3-0 with a close range header from Ian Hodges after Josiah Carbon’s cross had taken a deflection over Dominique Jean-Zepherin in the Dover goal.

On the hour mark, Armstrong was felled in the penalty area, but Craig Cloke struck his penalty straight at Allaway's legs, and Slough were able to scramble the ball away.

However, with 20 minutes left, Victor Renner scored his first goal in a Dover shirt, running onto a through pass and lifting the ball over the ‘keeper and into the net.

The game then changed completely. Dover were immediately in the driving seat, and Slough had to defend desperately.

Whites’ second goal came from a close range strike by Armstrong, but with only a couple of minutes to go they did not have enough time to save the game, and despite forcing a couple of corners Whites had to concede defeat to a Slough side who had looked comfortable winners until 20 minutes from the end.

Perhaps if Dover had converted that penalty, then they would have taken some reward from the match, but instead it was another odd-goal defeat.

Dover Athletic: Jean-Zepherin, Braithwaite, Cloke, Palmer, Shearer, Grime (Wright 75), Carruthers, Ryan (Bubb 70), Wilkins (Maynard 37), Renner, Armstrong.