Forres Mechanics 0 Rangers 1: Young legs carry Ibrox side into next round

Sports Writer

Monday 1 October 2012

THE road to recovery, not just the road to Hampden, can rarely have felt longer than it did for Ally McCoist on the Moray coast on Saturday evening.

Rangers stride out alongside Forres Mechanics on Saturday but struggle to pull away from their Highland League hosts. Picture: SNS

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Stewart Fisher

Those age-old platitudes about being pleased to be in the next round and hoping for a home tie in today's draw were appropriate indeed after the Ibrox club toiled to this laboured 1-0 William Hill Scottish Cup second-round victory against a Forres Mechanics side who sit 10th in the Press & Journal Highland League and played the last half-hour of this match with 10 men, after the dismissal of Nathan Sharp.

There is a danger of overstating the quality of the performance last Wednesday against a Motherwell side who failed to do themselves justice, but it was night and day compared to this depressing reprise of the club's away-day woes in the third division and McCoist fairly let his players know all about it afterwards."We never said it was going to be an overnight fix," said McCoist. "It's going to be a long road but I have to register my disappointment at how we played. The objective was to get into the next round and we did that – but I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I didn't. There's no comparison between our home performances and our away performances. We need to address it sooner rather than later. It's frustrating but hopefully I'll be less frustrated as the season goes on."There was mitigation in the absence of David Templeton, Dean Shiels, Ian Black and Francisco Sandaza through injury, and one source of solace resided in the continued emergence of the club's younger players. Kal Naismith, a 20-year-old Scotland youth striker who has previously had loan spells at Cowdenbeath and Partick Thistle, swept in his first goal for the club early on, substitute Robbie Crawford almost made it two with a late volley, and Lewis McLeod generally took on bigger, stronger players in central midfield like a dervish."We are delighted to get into the next round but we would be more delighted if we had a better performance to add to it as well," McLeod said afterwards. "We just haven't turned up as well as we should have when we have played away from home – that is nobody's fault but our own. We owe Ally a big away performance."Neil Alexander, the man who broke the hearts of the home side when he stuck out a leg to somehow save Kyle Scott's close-range effort from a Simon Allan free kick, said it was about time the club's older players helped out the youngsters a little bit. Lee McCulloch would be one honourable exception from the general malaise."I think every one of them [the young players] has done exceptionally since the start of the season, but I think they need to be looked after, we can't keep relying on them week in week out," said the Rangers goalkeeper. "The other boys have to step up."For the home side, this was both the biggest day of their careers and a source of regret. While Scott, a PE teacher in Elgin, went off into the night hoping for a kind hearing from his students, there were even more mixed emotions for Graham Fraser, who saw his side's last chance of a thoroughly deserved replay come and go when his header flashed wide. Fraser and his brother Lee, currently injured and unable to feature, are both boyhood Rangers fans and members of the Burghead Loyal."I played at Ibrox when I was 13 for Ross County against Rangers under-13s," Fraser said. "We lost 4-3 but Lee scored a hat-trick after coming on as a sub. We feel as though we should be back down there next week for the replay."

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Forres Mechanics 0 Rangers 1: Young legs carry Ibrox side into next round

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