It's So Easy Rebels

Victory was too easy for Slough to set any hearts racing among Saturday's Wexham Park crowd. The Rebels won at a canter, like those European Championship athletes easing up at the end of their heats, safe in the knowledge that qualification or three Vauxhall-Opel League points had been achieved. Slough should have scored several more goals than they did. At least two, anyway, as Jimmy Brown followed up his penalty hat-trick a couple of weeks back by having two spot kicks saved.

Kingstonian looked nothing like the resilient unit the Rebels battled against so many times last year in league and FA Cup and even in the last 25 minutes, when the home team became lazy and rather disinterested, they were never in the game.

Slough manager Alan Davies said: "It was fairly comfortable, but we could have scored a few more goals. First half we performed fairly well, second half I wasn't very happy with the performance. We seemed content that the game was won. “You have got to press your side two in by even more goals. “

Slow starting Slough made no significant moves on the Kings' goal until 18 minutes had gone. Devon Petty caused confusion in the box, Paul Waites picked up the loose ball and chipped towards the far post and panicky fullback Steve Hardwick flapped the ball away with his hand. Brown aimed for the same spot to the keeper's left into which he had planted his trio of penalties against Hitchin, but this time his shot was too near to John Power. Five minutes later Slough had a rare moment of worry as Graham Cox made a hash of a crossed ball and after a brief scramble, lanky Richard Parkin found the net, only for referee Taylor to have spotted an infringement in the goal area.

Waites headed over and Brown swept the ball above the bar after bringing it down well in the box, before Slough gained a 32nd minute lead. Keith White thumped a long ball over the deepest defender and Rowan Dodds raced away from him before lashing the ball wide of Power from 12 yards.

The half time cups of tea were flavoured with talk of more Rebels goals to come and the taste became more enriched when Slough got their second penalty 10 minutes after the break. Dodds did superbly on the right to make room to drive the ball across and must have been as amazed as everyone else when David Jones needlessly handled and even more astonished when Brown made the penalty save even easier this time repowering less than two minutes, though, the ‘keeper was given an impossible task to stop Petty’s close range volley after the ball had dropped from a Dodds-Power aerial duel.

And a further two minutes on Hardwick was lucky to escape with just a booking for a potentially crippling hack at Dodds offence 10 times as serious and damaging to the game of football than anything Dodds himself did to get sent off for dissent a few days earlier.

Brown had further proof that it was not his day after 63 minutes when Power lost his grip on White’s pull-back from the byline, but then appeared to unwittingly deflect Brown's shot from five yards against the underside of the bar. And that was about it-until the closing seconds when the unpopular Parkin failed to get on the end of Taylor's header and then White missed a chance to head home from Gary Woodcraft's cross.