🔗 Share this article

The job is tough, demanding, utterly exhausting … but I absolutely love my role,” remarks the Slough Town boss, positioned in an empty dressing room waiting for his squad to arrive for training. For the past two years, Davies has served as the player-manager of Slough Town who, positioned third bottom of the standings, are the lowest-placed team left in this season's FA Cup.

A Dual Role: Management and Education

Some players are stuck in traffic; the session was shifted earlier to the evening to accommodate a community side’s match. When the drills commences in bucketing rain, the sixth‑tier side are using the artificial pitch with a junior team. “I long believed it would be great to be a manager of a non-league football club and have a job on the side,” says Davies. The 37-year-old has opted out, instead watching from the sidelines, with a coaching board propped up in front of him.

“We continually emphasize the significance that we’re not just managers: we’re life coaches, we’re counsellors, we’re father figures,” he says.

The day before, he is at a local school for his second role. Over the course of 45 minutes, he quietens a lecture theatre of students with a sobering talk on how a gambling addiction ruined his professional journey as a footballer, damaged his connections and took him to the verge of ending his own life.

A Path Off Course: The Downward Spiral

Following treatment a decade past, Davies has not placed a bet since and is now an advocate on the dangers of gambling. He details to pupils how, when he netted a set-piece against Chelsea’s Petr Cech in a pre-season friendly, he thought he had made it. But by then, at 21 years old, his gambling was out of control.

The skilled player, then playing the second tier, was slipping away of training at the first opportunity to head to the bookmakers, often fabricating reasons to leave. Upon being questioned by his coach to prove it, Davies could not. He was not picked by his club again.

During a loan spell at another club, Davies thought he was on his way to a bigger team. When he learned they had bought another player, he went to the betting shop and squandered £7,000 in a single day. Subsequently, at Crawley, he started gambling on his own matches and would disappear into a restroom at half-time to place bets. Then, at Oxford United, he would stay up all night to gamble.

A Moment of Clarity

By the age of 26, Davies’s career was in freefall. He dropped three divisions to play for Dunstable. His debut was an road trip that passed his former club’s ground. “That was a sobering moment,” Davies recalls. “I remember looking at the ground from the bus and wondering: ‘What has happened?’ I will always remember that moment.”

His coach from that time is now his assistant at Slough and the pair have created an environment where players can speak openly about their issues, dismantling the walls of toxic masculinity that were prevalent when Davies was a youth and was too scared to talk his problem.

An Ideal Target: Why Young Footballers

While every case is individual, Davies believes prospective professionals are vulnerable to becoming addicted. The money, idle hours, the competitive nature, and the supposed ‘edge’ in sports betting were all elements in his addiction. “When you put all of these factors together, you create the perfect customer for a gambling operator.”

In the week leading up to Sunday’s second-round tie, Davies is speaking to two elite teams’ academy sides. “I believe like we’ve got a duty of care to protect the next generation, the ones that are coming through, and that’s why I do the work that I do,” he says.

Future Ambitions and FA Cup Dreams

Currently content, married and the dad to a young child, Davies is yet to hang up his playing boots and is aiming to begin his advanced coaching badge. “I have many regrets but the beauty of coming out the other side and moving on to management is that I’m going to correct the mistakes of my time as a player.”

Slough have already made it through several stages but have never reached the third round of the Cup. Such is the money involved, drawing a Premier League club in the subsequent stage could bring a windfall in seven figures for a team whose roster includes builders, personal trainers and teaching assistants.

The idea of facing coaches such as Pep Guardiola is a curious one for Davies. “It's unlikely there would be any complex plans. It’s one of those a game you’d be content to be defeated for the sake of the occasion.

“It’s incredible to see the non‑league teams that get paired with some of these powerhouses. You see it and you think: ‘Someday, could that be us?’”