Crick bagged a brace in the opening 20 minutes, after Portuguese has missed two good opportunities.
But although it looked like it was going to be one-way traffic, Portuguese put up a good fight in the second half.Vitor Santos forced a fine reflex save out of Scottish goalkeeper Sean McDonald while Helio Freitas turned brilliantly to wrong-foot his marker, but his fierce shot cannoned back into play off the framework of the goal.Scottish’s Ged McConnell found himself in acres of space just inside Portuguese’s penalty area but his chance went as he was quickly closed down by goalkeeper Ricardo De Sousa, who raced out of goal to push the ball away from McConnell’s feet.Charlie Smith latched onto a ball through the middle of Portuguese’s defence to make it 3-0 from 14 yards before player-manager José-Manuel Vieira grabbed a late Portuguese consolation with a rising left-foot drive giving McDonald no chance.Scottish manager Bob Kearsey said: ‘Two early goals set us up nicely, it’s always good to score early against Portuguese to take the sting out of the game a bit.’We then sat back a bit and Portuguese came at us a lot.
The start of the second half they had a better pace than us and we were unable to get our passing game together.
‘Fortunately we got a third before a silly mistake from us led to them pulling a goal back.’New faces and others returning from injuries seems to have left us with a lack of sharpness at the moment.
‘The bottom line is we’ve got another three points and I’m very happy about that.’Crick has now netted seven of Scottish’s eight divisional goals this season taking his total to 11 in five games.Portuguese Club: Ricardo De Sousa; Helio Freitas, Pedro Lopes, Artur Calaca, Daniel Maciel, Nelson Mwakazi, J Gouveia, Carlos Carolo, J Sousa, José-Manuel Vieira, Carlos Goncalves.
Subs used: Vitor Santos, M Ferreira.Scottish: Sean McDonald; Scott Devlin, Craig Ferey, Gordon Brodie; Chris McNabb, Lee Harvey, Ged McConnell, Jordan Docherty, James Scott; Ross Crick, Charlie Smith.
Subs used: David Brodie, Paul Aitken, Martin Forbes.Cautioned: Scott, McConnell, Crick, Smith, D Brodie.Officials: C Gouyette, A Cox, N Richardson.
