With the usual venue of Dumbarton’s Cheaper Insurance Direct Stadium unavailable, the switch to Stenhousemuir’s home ground proved to be a horrendously unlucky one as the Highlanders ran riot in a devastating first half period.
Liam Kelly was the only first-team player to feature for Ian Durrant’s side in Stirlingshire with injury and international duty preventing the likes of Jordan Thompson, Fraser Aird and Tom Walsh – first team players who regularly take part at under-20s level – from participating.
Young Scots Ross and Robby McCrorie, Ryan Hardie and Liam Burt also saw no action as they remain in Ireland with the national set-up’s under-19 side.
Those losses seemed to make no difference to Rangers in the early moments anyway as they dominated possession, but they were to find themselves a goal down after only six minutes following a defensive mix-up.
County’s Darren Moffat sprinted down the right touchline before delivering a cross into a congested penalty area. Liam Kelly came to try and punch clear, but his attempt dropped only at the feet of the aptly named Russell Dingwall to fire home into an empty net.
Rangers have come back from deficits on a number of occasions already this season, but their response to this setback would have disappointed coach Durrant, as the Staggies were allowed to exert control on the game.
And that dominance they were enjoying was soon to be rewarded further with the arrival of a second goal.
Yet another cross wasn’t dealt with by the Light Blues defence, allowing Blair Malcolm to flick the ball into the path of Greg Morrison to finish with aplomb, high into the roof of the net.
Again, the response from Rangers was tame, and the young Gers had Liam Kelly to thank for keeping the score down with excellent saves in quick succession from Moffat and Dingwall, but he could do nothing as County made it 3-0 with 10 minutes still to play in the first half.
Moffat, the man who had caused Rangers so many problems already in the half, got a rather fortuitous break of the ball on the edge of the area when a County foray forward broke down, but he made no mistake in picking out the bottom corner.
It was just a disaster from a Rangers perspective, and incredibly, it got even worse just before the half time interval.
Ross Brownlie was penalised for a foul on the edge of the area and as if almost to sum-up the first half for Durrant’s boys, James Ross’s free-kick effort took a massive deflection on its way to beating Kelly to make it 4-0.
One can only imagine the scenes in the ‘home’ dressing room at half time with the Gers coaching staff trying to work out what went wrong and how to put it right, and Jamie Mills, Jordan Gibson and Josh Jeffries found themselves making way for Kyle Bradley, Zak Rudden and Jamie Barjonas.
To be fair to Rangers, they were much more spirited in the second half as they limited County’s chances in front of goal, and created a number of chances at the other end that they ought to have done better with.
Dylan Dykes and Scott Roberts both fired over within seconds of each other when in decent positions, while Ross Lyon did exceptionally well to lay the ball on a plate for Zak Rudden but he couldn’t sort his feet out to get a shot away inside the six-yard box.
At no point was this a dirty game, and indeed there was hardly a strong tackle made in the entire game, but all of a sudden it boiled over with Russell Dingwall seeing red for a shocking tackle on Jamie Brandon while the young Rangers man was dismissed for his reaction to it.
The final minutes were petering out a little after that, although Max Ashmore came close to a consolation with a 30-yard drive that was beaten down by goalkeeper Mark Foden.
RANGERS: Kelly, Brandon, Brownlie, Lang, Mills (Bradley, 45), Dykes, Lyon, Ashmore, Jeffries (Rudden, 45), Gibson (Barjonas, 45), Roberts.
SUBS NOT USED: Wright, King.
ROSS COUNTY: Foden, Miller, Ross, Beeston, McLaughlin, Malcolm, Morrison, McLennan, Moffat, Dingwall, Morrison.
SUBS: Tait, MacIver, Wallace.