Rangers 1
Dundee 3
League (Premier Division)

Match Report

Newspaper extract from The Courier .

There were tears in the Rangers dressing-room after Dundee had got their first Premier League win at Ibrox by a convincing 3-1 margin in a remarkable game.

"Painful and hard to take," said Rangers boss Jock Wallace after his young players had cried. "We have to suffer it and learn," he continued. "They are frustrated and it is the growing-up process. It is hard to suffer."

However, there were no tears in the Dundee dressing-room, but no hectic celebrations either. Manager Archie Knox told them, "You have to be better than that. It is not enough. It won't beat better teams."

Dundee certainly weren't at their best, but they struck with devastating effect at exactly the right times.

The young Rangers team looked to have skill and ideas in the early stages and the Dundee defenders did a lot of hard work, but just when most of the 9554 fans were wondering how long it would take Rangers to score, Dundee struck their first blow.

They used the ball cleverly in a lengthy contest around the penalty box until they created an opening for Stuart Rafferty to hit a 20-yard shot over keeper Nicky Walker and into the net in 28 minutes.

A big effort was expected from Rangers before half-time, but Dundee had grabbed the initiative and instead of being in danger of losing a goal before half-time, they scored a second.

Rafferty burst through on the right to hit another 20-yarder. This time Walker managed to push it into the air, but Bobby Connor ghosted in on the left and had only to head into an open goal from a couple of yards.

Rangers were not written off but their efforts in the second half were not yielding much until Dundee made mistakes on the hour. Bobby Geddes and John Brown got in a tangle and Robert Prytz's cross found Ally McCoist unmarked. Tosh McKinlay got his head to McCoist's header but only helped it into the net.

Would Dundee fold? Not the new Dundee! A couple of minutes later they were two goals up again when a Rafferty corner was headed down by Brown and Ray Stephen nipped behind the defence to slam the ball into the net.

The return of Bobby Glennie made a big difference to Dundee and the fact that he will miss the Dumbarton, Dundee United and St Mirren games in eight days starting on Saturday, must pose a big problem.

Archie Knox, who believes he does not have a big enough pool of players, commented "If we could get another four players we would be capable of doing something." Knox believes it takes six-eightnyears to rebuild a team.

He may have found a new first team player in young Colin Hendry who took over the centre forward spot and played well until replaced for the last 15 minutes. He was hurt after only two minutes and showed great promise under severe handicap. It could be a fine end to a nightmare season for Colin.

He picked up a virus on last summer's German tour and was out for months. At Christmas he had to have his tonsils out. He had played only a handful of reserve games all season.