Europa League Qualifying (First Round, Second Leg)
Thursday 18th July 2019
It’s no understatement that Rangers will face much sterner challenges on their way to conquering all in the coming months than that offered by St Joseph’s, but the near-capacity Ibrox crowd were certainly entertained as the part-time minnows were comfortably dispatched.
Leading 4-0 from the first leg in Gibraltar, there was never going to be any comeback or a cock up of Progres Niederkorn proportions. Instead, this would always be a night where the goals would flow and those in attendance would ask themselves ‘How many can we score?’
As a veteran of 16 seasons and over 930 competitive games in the UK, I’ve seen plenty of weird and wonderful things - from squirrel-led pitch invasions to kit men forgetting to bring the kit - but even this one represented a new occurrence as St Joseph’s players wrote a song titled ‘Forever Blue’ to commemorate undoubtedly the biggest night in their careers.
In reality, St Joseph’s should be forever grateful to the officials, who disallowed three goals and failed to give a stonewall spot-kick as without any of that (plus some wasteful finishing at times) it could quite easily have been 10-0 on the night, let alone 10-0 on aggregate!
For those who’ve never been to Ibrox previously, it’s a lovely hour-long stroll down the River Clyde from the city centre if the weather is nice (a rarity up here). Or, if you’re feeling lazy or it’s p*ssing it down, the subway is situated a couple of minutes walk from the stadium with multiple stops in the city centre to either board or alight.
On the pitch, it was difficult not to feel sympathetic towards the visitors when they went a goal down inside the first few minutes with Joe Aribo finding the target.
Nevertheless, for the majority of the first half, they did enough to frustrate a completely dominant Rangers by packing men behind the ball - forcing Steven Gerrard’s side to play the ball backwards much too often.
Despite Alfredo Morelos having a goal ruled out for offside and youngster Jake Hastie smashing a shot high and wide when he should have done much better, it wasn’t until first half injury-time that Rangers did eventually double their lead with Morelos heading home from a perfectly-worked corner routine.
Morelos made it 3-0 with a spot-kick not long after the re-start after Greg Doherty was barged over just inside the box, and the Colombian soon completed his hat-trick with a superb flick-finish following yet more good work by Doherty in and around the box.
With the Gibraltans tiring and the floodgates now well and truly open, they must have been relieved to see Morelos substituted immediately after the goal which gave him the match ball.
They probably weren’t pleased to see that an experienced international with over 100 Premier League goals to his name in Jermaine Defoe, was his replacement though!
It came as no surprise that the ex-England forward wreaked havoc and bagged a couple of goals - firstly when he guided the ball home from a Matt Polster cross, then when he emphatically slammed a shot past Jamie Robba (once of Torquay United) after more intricate build up play.
Amidst the tidal wave of incessant second half pressure, St Joseph’s did have one golden opportunity to leave with a bit of a smile as Wes Foderingham and Andy Halliday combined to deny Juan Pena, who managed to create an opening from a corner.
The last time I recall watching Foderingham was in a game at Preston North End in September 2012 when he was playing for Swindon Town.
Subbed off by Paolo Di Canio early on that afternoon, he booted a water bottle down the touchline before storming down the tunnel in what was probably the biggest show of dissent at the Italian’s over the top army-like regime and was threatened with ‘punishment’ in the aftermath.
Seven years on, Foderingham’s clearly gone on to much better things whilst the scalded maniac that is Di Canio is virtually unemployable now in an industry where even Joey Barton and Steve Evans can get jobs!
Deep into four minutes of injury-time, Connor Goldson picked up the most pointless yellow card in history when he was baited and ended up involved in some heated exchanges with a couple of the St Joseph’s players.
When you’re 10-0 up on aggregate with a matter of seconds remaining, you don’t need to be Albert Einstein to work out that laughing in their faces, calling the opponents shit, or blowing a kiss might be a better retort if they’re trying to wind you up.
But it couldn’t take the shine off a pleasant night at Ibrox.
Even more pleasant was being in a seat between the directors box and press box and managing to blag both a team-sheet and programme, free of charge.
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