Late Slack goal gives Ollerton all the points

“Slacky” was a crucial part of previous Ollerton squads when they were at Step 6, making 30 appearances for the club in both the 2021-2022 and 2022-2023 season.

However, at the end of his last season with the club, things began to unravel for Ollerton with a strong, competitive squad breaking up and going off to play elsewhere.

After being relegated from Step 6 into the Central Midlands Alliance League, Ollerton have stabilised over the past two seasons, though this current campaign has not gone as well as manager Lee Cook would have hoped in the summer.

For George, his time away from Ollerton sadly saw him unfortunately suffer a broken kneecap which put his playing career on hold for almost two years.

Thankfully, he has been able to recover fully, and the stars have recently aligned to bring Slack back home to The Buckley Brown Stadium.

With his cousin Keegan Burton already in the Ollerton ranks, and his relationship already with the club, it always felt destined that Slack would pull on the red and black once again.

And it’s safe to say that since making his return, he has hit the ground running and made a big impact!

After a run of four successive heavy defeats against teams challenging for promotion, Ollerton faced Glapwell in late February in a big game at the bottom of the table. With weeks of training under his belt, and confidence built that his knee would hold, George made his first start against Glapwell and helped secure Ollerton’s first clean sheet in 11 games, as they won 1-0.

Slack’s previous spell with the club saw him have a useful habit of scoring goals at crucial times – scoring 8 goals in 32 appearances across the 2021-2022 season – and it was this eye for goal which stole the headline’s in Ollerton’s last game against AFC Phoenix.

In another crucial game, Ollerton fell behind to a Danny Briggs strike. However, in the 36th minute, Freddie Norris’ whipped corner found Slack inside the six-yard box, and he was able to turn the ball home to draw the Town level.

Ollerton conceded another to go into the break 2-1 behind but did eventually draw level once again through Harvey Limb.

With time running out, it looked like Ollerton would have to share the points with their visitors from Rotherham, but in the dying embers of the game, Ollerton and Slack scored again.

This time it was his cousin Burton who delivered the corner towards the far post, and Slack was able to get his head on it and find the back of the net, sparking brilliant scenes of celebration.

That goal makes it back-to-back victories for Ollerton, the first time they have done so all season.

With 9 games of the season left, Lee Cook’s men will be hoping that this can be a platform to end the season strongly.