Geelong Rangers embraces world game
| April 8th, 2011

GEELONG Rangers has turned to a foreign legion to help lift the club from the despair of its 2010 season.

A total of nine different nationalities are now represented at the Myers Reserve club following an influx of overseas talent brought in by new coach Dale Harris, himself a South African.

Recruits include Jason Le Roux and Gareth De-Mink, both from South Africa, and Zimbabwe duo Tawanda Tsorayi and Tawanda Madzikanda .

Saudi Arabian youngster Mohammed Khaled has also joined, along with Nathan Darlington, from Liverpool in England and Maltese player Nathan Drazinic.

Other new faces include James Blackburn, who has re-signed for Rangers after a season at St George Cross, and former Corio midfielder Enis Eren.

The diverse line-up will be aiming to improve on last seasons horror relegation, where the team managed just eight points and scored only eight goals for the entire year.


Harris said that the team had a target of beating last year's points total in the first five games of the season. After last week's opening day draw, Rangers needs just three wins to achieve this.

"I believe in the team and I think that they will be challenging at the end of the season," Harris said.

"It's still early days and we want to stabilise first but they've given themselves the target to challenge. That target hasn't come from us."

Harris said that multinational squad has gelled well, despite the addition of numerous new faces.

"The atmosphere at training is amazing, you'd think that they had been friends for generations," he said.

"I'm proud to see the unity there is in the team. A few of the players said that the team unity and spirit went wrong last season but right now they all love training and hanging out with each other."

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