Rangers travelled to Grendon Underwood with only forward Matty Till and midfielder Damon Troughton unavailable, otherwise manager Martin Brown had a full strength side available with Mark Murrell, Gary Hartwell and Pete Rowe all returning to the squad. Sam Cooley passed a pre-match fitness test and moved to left midfield with Chris Watt coming in on the right, Gary Hartwell returned to left back with James McCrory dropping to the bench. Otherwise the team was unchanged from last weeks demolition of Bletchley Tree’s and the squad was in high spirits looking to put a dent in Grendon’s title hope’s whilst maintaining their own.
A pre match pitch inspection found the week’s good weather had dried out an otherwise flat and decent surface. A slight wind blew in from the north giving one team assistance, but kicking up the slight incline. It was Grendon who won the toss and decided to use this possible advantage and the game kicked off in glorious sunshine. The early exchanges were tentative with neither side wanting to give anything away, Grendon playing a tight 4-4-2 with Rangers looking to exploit any possible space in the wide area’s. Grendon enjoyed good spells of early poccesstion forcing Rangers to play on the counter attack, one or two good early chances were brought to a halt by the opposition linesman with Rangers defence holding firm either allowing the floated balls to run to Keeper Sam Cherry or heading clear. The deadlock was broken on the half hour mark, Gary Hartwell gathering the ball from a throw out from Sam Cherry, passing the ball down the line to Sam Cooley who played a good pass through the defence to Steve Bateman, Steve gathered the ball well first time and played in midfielder Joe Ramscar who had burst from his usual holding midfield role to find himself one on one with the keeper. Ramscar finished the good team move by expertly slotting past the home keeper to make the score 1-0. This spurred Grendon into life who frantically tried to even the score before half time, unfortunately for them most of the attempted balls to their forwards again either rolling through to Sam Cherry or being comfortably dealt with by the Rangers defensive back line.
Half time came as some relief to both side’s with the sun starting to take its toll and a welcome drink was met with words of encouragement ensuring nothing was given away during the first 15 minutes of the half as both teams knew the next goal would be vital. Grendon came out looking to change to a shorter style of play which saw them gain good spells of possession but ultimately being fruitless due to some dogged defending and determination not to allow any opposition player time on the ball by the Rangers players. In fact in between these periods of passing Rangers managed to miss a couple of decent chances that fell to Bateman and Troughton.
It came as no surprise to the watching few when substitute Lloyd Lambert was played in by the excellent Dan Tanner, turning his man inside and powerfully firing past a despairing keeper. Lambert doubled his tally for the afternoon when fellow substitute Mark Murrell broke the offside trap on the left and swung in an inviting cross which was converted well via Lloyds left foot on the spin.
The game petered out at this point with Grendon seemingly unable to come up with the answer to breaking Ranger’s solid defence, Captain Rory Manning and fellow centre half Nathan Quinn winning anything that came their way. The referee sounded the final whistle and a clear message has been sent out to all fellow title contenders that Rangers have no intention to settle for a cup final place and a top half finish.
The games will come thick and fast now with the final shake up underway, the pleasing thing for AFC Rangers will not only be the win but the commitment and depth of their squad which will be needed in the coming weeks.
Grendon Rangers 0 vAFC Bickhill Rangers 3