Maybe John Rebello is a hard man to please. Or maybe he's just afraid that if he starts to enjoy life too much, its pleasures will be cruelly snatched away from him.

Whichever, the Vasco coach shuffled uneasily and tried hard to suppress a smile when asked if last night's Dudley Eve trouncing of Boulevard at a rainswept Devonshire Rec was his side's best performance of the season.

"Well, Boulevard had a couple of good opportunities to get it back to 2-1 early in the second half,'' he said. "We've got to make sure we keep putting our good positions away.'' It's true, Boulevard did have one or two decent openings to reduce the arrears after going in at the break two down and none better than the one that fell to Dwight Warren five yards out with 63 minutes on the clock.

Stevie Wade slipped a neat pass through to him and Warren did everything right, looking to chip the ball over 'keeper Timmy Figuerido as he tried to spread himself. But the Vasco shot-stopper did enough to get some part of his anatomy on the ball and it deflected up to strike the bar.

The Boulevard fans had little time to absorb the injustice of it before the ball had been swept upfield to an unmarked Keith Jennings who lobbed home to make it 3-0. At that point the Blazers lost all sense of shape and discipline and it was no surprise when, five minutes later, Jennings swept home the fourth.

Substitue Taur Caisey's right wing corner which curled straight through Andre Hendrickson's hands for the fifth goal six minutes from time was merely the punchline to a very painful joke for Boulevard.

In fact, Vasco took the lead in somewhat farcical circumstances, despite dominating an opening 25 minutes in which left back Burton Bruce went close with a cracking shot from 22 yards which Hendrickson tipped over, before Ottis Steede's volley from a full 40 yards forced the Boulevard 'keeper to palm over again. Boulevard's Dean Boyles and Sammy Swan became involved in an off-the-ball incident in the 39th minute which continued even after both had endured a lengthy lecture from the referee. Players from either side tried to separate them and eventually Boyles decided the only way to maintain his cool was to opt out of the game for a short period by going to stand by his team's bench.

In the meantime, Steede eluded a wild challenge by Stevie Wade which, had it connected, would have given the Vasco midfielder a Christmas close encounter with the Mir space station, before laying the ball back to Swan, who took advantage of the absence of his marker to score from 12 yards.

Four minutes later Vasco made it two, this time Steede, knitting his side's attractive movements together from a more central midfield position than usual, pouncing on a loose ball 20 yards out to hammer a rising shot past an astonished Hendrickson.