Rangers shatter lethargic team

Press, 2 November 1984, Page 44

Rangers shatter lethargic team

NZPA Glasgow After scoring its first ever win in England against Reading on Monday, the New Zealand soccer team was jolted back to reality in Glasgow yesterday with a 5-0 hammering. Glasgow Rangers, the Scottish League Cup champions who have conceded just two goals in their last 11 league matches, proved too strong and fast in every department for the New Zealanders, who trailed 1-0 at half-time.

The All Whites began well, keeping the ball out of their net for the first 35 minutes, but the longer the match went on the more the Scots took control.

Despite - the coach, Mr Allan Jones, putting three new players on at halftime and a further two later in the second spell in an attempt to get ’‘fresh legs” on the field, the New Zealanders looked tired and slow. In the last 15 minutes many looked as though they would rather have been stretched out on a bed than running about a soccer pitch. The Rangers players, who stayed sharp throughout, took advantage of their fitness to run in three goals in those last 15 minutes, two of them in the last six minutes.

Afterwards a disappointed Mr Jones said: ’‘Nothing went wrong. They just couldn’t match them for pace and power - that really is the be all and end

all of the story.” The team captain, Allan Boath, said the team had been “outplayed and outclassed by a top professional side.”

Neither Jones nor Boath were prepared to make excuses for the defeat. But it was clear the demands of playing a tough match on Monday, spending eight hours on a bus on Tuesday, and then playing one of Britain’s best sides the next day, had taken its toll on the players. “Maybe we are asking too much of our players to perform at this level with very very short periods of rest,” Jones said.

“But we knew what it was going to be like and there were no alternatives. You either accepted the tour as it was or didn’t tour at all.”

Like in Newcastle last Wednesday, where they lost 3-0, it was almost New Zealand which opened the scoring. In the fourteenth minute Colin Walker passed to Grant Turner but what should have been a goal failed when the ball bounced awkwardly and connected with Turner’s shin rather than his boot and flew off course.

Rangers then launched attack after attack but were foiled by the New Zealand defence until in the thirtyfourth minute when Ally McCoist was perfectly positioned in front of the goal to head in a well aimed cross

from lan Redford. The All Whites held on until half-time but Rangers, boosted by four fresh players, took charge in the second spell. In the fiftieth minute an inspired piece of team work enabled Robert Prytz to place the ball gently in the back of the net In the seventy-sixth minute Robert Russell was in the ideal spot to pick up a pass from John MacDonald and slip it past Richard Wilson. Wilson made amends however with two superb saves within the next two minutes. The scoreline took on whitewash proportions in the dying stages of the match when Robert Fleck, from 20 metres out, curled the ball past Wilson and saw it hit the corner post and then bounce into the net.

With just two minutes remaining, Fleck sent the ball into the box, Prytz fired but hit the post and Mitchell came through to finish the move. The striker, Colin Walker, stood out as the best player for New Zealand, while for the third time in as many matches, the defender Ricki Herbert, had an excellent game. Jones summed up his feelings at the end of the night when he said: “I wouldn’t castigate the players. They couldn’t have x given it any more than they gave.”