Rangers were deserved winners over visitors Sidmouth Town on Wednesday night but things might have been so different if goalkeeper Luke Vernon had not been in top form. He brought off three outstanding saves in the first period as the visitors created chances with the very little possession they enjoyed and the Sidmouth striker Clarke must have wandered what he had to do to score.
As I said we dominated proceedings and rattled the bar from one of the numerous corners we had and this looked like our best hope of scoring and so it was to prove when just before half time a Jack Lewis corner was not cleared and Sam Jones was first to react to poke the ball home.
The second half continued in the same trend with the home team looking much more purposeful as thevisitors struggled to get out of their own half. A bit of magic from Jack Lewis doubled our lead when his free kick from 25 yards found the top corner. It was all Rangers now and when Joe Wilkinson found himself in the clear on the hour there was only going to be one result as he calmly slotted the ball home from 12 yards. Almost immediately it was four when Jack Bryant fired home from the edge of the box. It was time now for two of our young Reserve players to join the action with Ben Scott and Brendon Cherry replacing George Painter and Sam Jones. Deep into injury time Joe Wilkinson worked himself an opening to rifle home his second and our fifth to seal a well earned three points.
It was refreshing to hear the referee after the game complement both sets of players on the spirit in which the game was played and he wished every game was as easy as that to referee.
Clive was naturally pleased with the result “I was pleased for Luke tonight because he was mainly responsible for the clean sheet. I did not think that we were at our best in the first half but we certainly picked up the pace of the game in the second period and ran out worthy winners.”
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