Waites Ends Ken's Shame

No one was more relieved to see Paul Waites put away Slough's winner against Dulwich Hamlet than Kenny Wilson.

If the Rebels had been restricted to only one point from Saturday's game at Wexham Park the blame would almost certainly have fallen on Wilson's shoulders. The Slough striker missed three easy chances between his side going one up after 19 minutes and being pegged back to 1-1 after 65.

But manager Alan Davies came quickly to his defence: "He has scored a few goals lately, it was just one of those days. Unfortunately every chance seemed to fall to him, but he made the two goals. The best players miss goals at least he was in the right place at the right time.

Slough always looked by far the superior side and it was only their lack of success in front of goals which threatened to deny them a win that strengthened their hold on third place in the Vauxhall-Opel League.

“We played well on a glue pot of a pitch," said Davies. "We defended quite well and could have been three up in the first half. In the second half we found it a little hard to break them down, but if we had taken our chances we could have had five. “

There was no faulting the construction and execution of the Rebels' opening goal after 19 minutes. Jimmy Brown turned nicely to send Wilson away down the left wing and he timed his pass inside perfectly for Devon Petty to finish from close range.

Brown, Petty and Waites combined in a move which ended with Brown's shot being spoiled by the presence of a defender's foot, but there were no Dulwich players in sight as Wilson raced through on to White's pass after 26 minutes.

Yet Wilson proceeded to screw an awful shot yards wide. Wilson the provider proved to be a good deal more effective than Wilson the finisher. He beat Perkins to send over a cross which found Waites arriving late to connect with superb header, which Jason Pridham acrobatically turned over the bar.

With Tony Knight continuing in the same impressive manner he has been displaying for several weeks, it needed an apparent foul on Waites that was not given to set up Frank Clark for a shot that skidded wide of Slough's goal.

Pridham repeated his earlier heroics with a fine push-over from Jimmy Jacobs' deflected drive, but Slough's Trevor Bunting needed the bar to save him as Brian Perkins got fiercely on the end of Clark's low centre from the right. Brown’s battling in the Dulwich box resulted in the ball running for Wilson to poke an apparently easy chance wide from less than 10 yards, but worse was to come.

Pridham's short kick was headed by White into the path of Wilson, who found the 'keeper backing away from him as he raced through. Wilson unwisely chose to try and go round Pridham, with the inevitable disastrous results.

After 65 minutes Wilson's miss took on greater significance. Tony Mathias delivered the ball low into the area and saw it get through a crowd to Perkins, whose shot was touched by Bunting but not kept out of the net.

Three minutes later Slough's anxiety was relieved, due partly to the uneven pitch which caused the ball to bounce badly in front of Pridham as Wilson crossed from the left. The 'keeper failed to hold and Waites was on hand for an unmissable opening.

Not for the first time in recent weeks, the arrival of Mark Davis as substitute served to make Slough look more potent attacking force. He won the ball that gave Brown the chance to cross to the far post, where yes, you guessed Wilson came sliding in and missed the ball completely.

Wilson had minutes earlier been the victim of a foul that earned Phil Smith a booking. Davis almost got the goal everyone seemed willing for him when, in injury time, he' headed on for Brown, who headed back for Davis, whose shot was closed down by Pridham.

Match Stats:
Corners: Slough 8, Dulwich 5.
Attempts on target-off target-blocked: Slough 5-5-3, Dulwich 1-11-0.
Slough attempts: Waites 2-1-0, Jacobs 1-0-0, White 1-0-0, Petty 1-0-0, Wilson 0-2-0, Brown 0-1-2, Davis 0-1-1.