Alvaro Padron, Gura Miah, Shane Kubota, Chris Seaton, Craig Albrightson, Jeremy Kirkman, Ruben Oggel (65 Luis Zavaleta), Todd Konning, Jose-Marie Blanco, Pierre Brard, Dave Budd (70 – Steve Black)

Unused Subs:

The team were looking forward to starting the new season, but there were mixed emotions considering the first game up was against one of the "big two" in the league - the Casuals.  The difficult start was compounded by a few Rangers departures during the transfer window, with Tarik, Jorge and Sesay all leaving for pastures green (well in the case of Sesay it was more of a public flogging by Singapore officials before returning to pastures brown).

Still, the team had gained a couple of new players, with Pierre and Jeremy starting their Cosmo league debuts and the rest of the team were keen to give Casuals a good game.

We had a good talk before the game about how we wanted to play and what each of our jobs were, and to the team's cerdit we stuck to our task and kept the usually clinical Casuals at arms length.  In fact it was Rangers who opened the scoring on the 25 minute mark, with some patient build up work from the back finding Pierre unmarked at the back-post after a neat cross by Chema and some good work by Todd and Dave.  To be fair it was the first real chance of the half, but was finished well by the debutant.  1-0 up and we were looking comfortable, with only two half-opportunities from Casuals to worry about before the half-time break.

The team were pretty happy with their efforts and were confident that if we continued to play like we had that we could frustrate the Casuals and come away with a result.  Still, football is a funny game and some loose defending early in the second half gifted the Casuals with the equaliser and a way back into the game.  The finish was well struck from the edge of the area, giving Alvaro little chance.

The goal winded the Rangers as Casuals pushed for the winner, but Rangers held out with some great defending from Jeremy to keep Dom under wraps, and a couple of good saves from Alvaro.  Rangers should have took the lead mid way through the second half when the Casuals defence missed a through ball and Blacky led the chase.  If only he didn't have half a field to run first he may have been able to have a shot on goal, but the covering defender didn't have too much trouble chasing him down.

Just as it looked as though a hard-earned point was secured, disaster struck with minutes to go!  Craig had the ball under control in defence, but in a moment of madness he gifted the ball to Dom Mooney who made no mistake and dispatched it past the helpless Alvaro.

Our resistance was finally broken and it affected us badly.  Within a few minutes the game was sewn up, with Casuals running straight through the middle of the park unchallenged before slotting in the 3rd.

I think at the start of the match we may have been partially satisfied with a hard fought 3-1 loss against a strong Casuals team, but the team were devestated that we didn't come away with a point for our efforts.

Blacky