Kilsyth Rangers fail to overcome Ashfield

Kilsyth Rangers 0Ashfield 1New Coin Automatics West of Scotland Cup, first round

A BAD day for Rangers. Not only did they crash out of the competition at the first hurdle, but an on-field brawl near the finish resulted in them ending up with only nine players at the end.

In truth they never really looked like overcoming a very competent Ashfield who have now scored four straight wins over them in the past year.

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It was an extremely depleted Rangers squad which started the game, only three players available as subs., and with coach Danny Smith taking a place in the starting line-up.

Ashfield took up the initiative right from the kick-off and it was not long before they were creating good openings around the Rangers' goal.

Only a couple of timely offside decisions by the stand-side assistant prevented them from taking an early lead and more than once Duke also came to the rescue with good stops. The pressure on the home defence was almost relentless although it hasd to be said that the defencsive work was also very good. Nevertheless there were several bad misses by Ashfield that really should have brought a goal.

Rangers had several long range shots that McGlenachan easily dealt with. Only one good effort from Joe Barclay caused him any real problem.

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At half-time there was still no score, but Ashfield were miles ahead on points.

The second half showed little change in the pattern of the match to begin with, but as it progressed Rangers did start to become more of a threat with several real chances made. Midway throught the half they introduced a couple of subs., D. Barclay and Dolan replacing Smith and McAteer and briefly they looked a real threat. However, Ashfield also made changes and soon re-assumed the upper hand.

Then with around a quarter of an hour remaining a clumsy tackle by Tough resulted in a penalty for Ashfield which Smith converted to give them a deserved lead.

Things started to become a little heated from this point. Previously their had been few incidents in the game, and the referee had handled it very well. An injury to an Ashfield player appeared to provoke them into some tough tackling of their own and one such incident resulted in retaliation by McLellan on the perpetrator. Immediately others became involved and within seconds virtually every player, both sets of management and coaches and even spectators were taking part in a massive confrontation.

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The referee and his assistants eventually restored a semblance of order to the proceedings, but McLellan and David Waters both received red cards. Only one Ashfield player was booked, although in truth, far too many were involved for the referee to have any real chance of picking out the main offenders.

Eventually the game was restarted to play out the remaining few minutes and despite being down to nine Rangers made several chances to score and salvage a penalty shoot-out with goalkeeper Duke even going up for a corner kick.

It was not to be though, and now Rangers must regroup for next week's tough home match against Dunipace and the Scottish tie the following week.

KILSYTH: Duke, Doyle, Carr, McGinty, Tough, Waters, Smith, McLellan, J. Barclay, Flannery, McAteer. Subs: D. Barclay, Kelly, Dolan.

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ASHFIELD: McGlenachan, Coll, Passmore, Brand, Smith, Thomson, McCann, Wright, Wood, Hall, Martin. Subs: Chalmers, Reilly, Gault, Fraser, Cairley, McShane, O'Donnell.

This Saturday, Rangers are at home to Dunipace in the league. Kick-off 2pm.

Rangers have been drawn away to Thornton Hibs in the second round of the Emirates Airline Scottish Junior Cup, to be played on Saturday, October 30.