Jerminal de Rasón saw off Santamarina 5-1 in the Losers Stage third round of the Torneo Federal A on Wednesday evening. The hosts opened their account through Luciano Dominguez before Daniel De Hoyos doubled the advantage before the break. Santamarina's solitary reply came from Gastón Oliveri, though the visitors could never recover from the deficit they faced at half-time.
And here's the thing about matches like this — once a side concedes two goals in quick succession, the game often slips away. By the sixtieth minute Jerminal de Rasón had recovered their two-goal cushion through Oliveri's own name on the scoresheet, though I should note that was actually Navarro who scored, not Oliveri. The Spanish names on these players always trip me up, but G. Navarro made it 4-1 just two minutes later.
Alejandro Gonzalez wrapped up the scoring at the 84th minute, and there was another goal at the 86th minute though the scorer wasn't recorded in the data available to me. Five goals in an evening like this, and you wonder if the visitors had any idea what was coming. To be fair, Santamarina had lost four of their previous five matches before arriving here, so perhaps they expected a difficult afternoon.
The statistics tell an odd story, I'll admit. Both sides are credited with 50 per cent possession and zero corners, zero shots on target, zero shots off target. No cards for either team either. Numbers like these make you think of a match where the ball simply wouldn't stay in play, or perhaps the data collection was incomplete. What matters is the result on the board, not the gaps in the statistics.
Jerminal de Rasón move up to fourth place with ten points from seven games, while Santamarina remain tenth on six points after seven matches. The hosts have won two and drawn four, while the visitors have suffered five defeats from their seven outings. For a team staring at the drop, this result does little to ease the pressure on the coaching staff.