Rangers welcomed Dartmouth to Adopstar Park on Saturday in a SWPL fixture .
Rangers for once had a full squad available , Dartmouth who were on a run of 14 defeats were boosted by a couple of additions due to cancellations elsewhere . On a heavy but perfect playable pitch a fairly even first half saw Dartmouth looking the more dangerous with a couple of good efforts on goal .
At the other end Rangers had several corners and a few shots from distance but without creating any clear cut chances . With 5 minutes to go until half time the game sprung into life . An ariel challenge between Rangers Harry Varnals and Dartmouth’s Stuart Bowker left Harry with a head injury following what looked like a clear elbow from the Dartmouth player . Unfortunately for Rangers the only two people in the ground who didn’t see it were the ref and linesman but as the ref said afterwards “if I didn’t have a clear view I cant make a decision .” which is fair comment . Within 2 minutes Dartmouth went ahead when Stuart Bowker broke clear and produced a superb finish past Luke Vernon to put Dartmouth ahead at half time . Rangers came out strongly in the second half putting pressure on the Dartmouth goal and within 10 minutes were awarded a penalty for handball . Up stepped Conor Bryant whose well placed penalty was well saved by the Dartmouth keeper low to his left .
Rangers kept on pushing and a couple of great blocks from the away defenders kept the score at 1-0 . With the home team pushing men forward after 75mins we were caught on the counter attack with George Danridge running through on goal to finish past Luke to make it 2-0 to Dartmouth . With 2 mins left the visitors were awarded a penalty which was dispatched by Robbie Bowker to give Dartmouth a 3-0 victory for their first win after 14 straight defeats . Manager Paul Pocock said afterwards “ Again fine margins cost us the game . We felt they should have been down to 10 men but there’s no excuse for switching off straight after the incident to find ourselves 1-0 down . When we had the chance to get back into the game a great save from Conor’s penalty and some excellent defending kept us at bay . The disappointing thing again is that instead of really piling the pressure on for the equaliser with 15 minutes to go we concede and we lose the game . We go again at Honiton and Wednesday when hopefully we will have at least 1 new face in the squad “
Well done to Dartmouth and we look forward to visiting them in a few weeks for the return fixture .
Next up we are away to Honiton on Wednesday with a 7.30 pm kick off .
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