Fife Rangers 1 – 1 Sidac Social

After taking them 15 games to do so, Fife Rangers finally earned their first points of the season this afternoon, with a hard-fought point against Sidac Social.

Going into the game, it was manager Andy Fannon’s team-talk of playing with pride to his players that seemed to make the Rangers players increase their performance up a notch or two.

However, this applied to much for one of the Rangers players when a moment of madness from defender Kieran Bacon left them with 10 men for the majority of the match, when with just 5 minutes played, he slapped one of the Sidac players, leaving referee Richard Spedding with no choice but too show him a straight red card.

To the credit of his team mates though, they kept on battling and were rewarded in the 25th minute when Samuel Morris went on a mazy run skipping past three Sidac defenders before pulling the ball back to Leon Padget who finished past Sidac keeper David Antrobus to put the blues 1-0 up.

They were also comfortable at the back in the first half, with Sidac not really testing keeper Scott Cameron.

Just before the half-time interval, again another run from the impressive Morris on the right wing saw his cross fall to Thomas Neary but his shot on the half volley just missed the target to leave them with just the one goal advantage at the interval.

Understandably Rangers seemed to invite the pressure onto them as the second half went on without them being able to find a second goal, with the ten men obviously going to take its toll towards the end of the game.

However the back five of Cameron, Farrell, Rose and Jackson were rock solid and it looked increasingly unlikely that Sidac would be able to break them down.

Sadly this wasn’t to be though, when with just 5 minutes remaining it took a bit of genius from Sidac striker Jon Powell to snatch a point for them.

When Rangers gave the ball away in the middle of the park, Powell picked up the ball and played a quick one-two with strike partner Carl Shaw, he hit a shot with his weaker left foot that rifled into the top right hand corner, leaving Cameron with no chance.

The final minutes of the game led to a half chance to Morris but his shot was comfortably saved and the game finished one each, to leave the Rangers side pleased with a first point of the season, after playing nearly 85 minutes with one player less.

Manager Fannon will be pleased with the effort that his lads showed, even with relegation looming large with just six games remaining, and them having to win every single one of them to avoid any chance of escaping the drop.

By Danny Burthem

• Posted in: First Team ♦ Match Reports