The Nerang Eagles conjured the perfect farewell for club stalwart Darrell Olive with a 4-1 win over Burleigh

The Nerang Eagles have conjured the perfect farewell for club stalwart Darrell Olive after defeating reigning Gold Coast Premier League Champions Burleigh Heads 4-1. READ ALL YOUR FOOTBALL NEWS

THE Nerang Eagles conjured the perfect farewell for club stalwart Darrell Olive after defeating reigning Gold Coast Premier League Champions Burleigh Heads 4-1.

Olive passed away last Wednesday following a brief battle with illness.

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Originally from the southern Sydney region, Olive arrived on the Gold Coast in the late 1970s and served from Twin Towers, to Palm Beach, Kingscliff, Tumbulgum Rangers, Murwillumbah, Tweed, Burleigh, Canunga and more before eventually landing at Nerang Soccer Club and the Academy of Football Australia in his final years as a coaching director and mentor.

Nerang Eagles playmaker Shaun Robinson strides ahead of his Burleigh opponent during his team thumping four goal haul against reigning Football Gold Copast Premier League titans Burleigh Bulldogs on Sunday. Photo: Luke Sorensen.

Players wore black armbands and observed a minutes silence pre-game before Burleigh captain Matt Hilton converted an early penalty kick to give the visitors an early lead.

Nerang tall forward Adam Powell with a perfectly placed header a short time later and swayed the tide in his side’s favour.

Powell scored once more before Luke Marsh and Shaun Robinson added to Burleigh’s woes in the second half with two more brilliant goals which left Burleigh coach Colin Phelan reconsidering his side’s league credentials.

“We’ve got to decide whether we try and scrap away and maybe scrape into the [top] four if you like, and then see how we go in the finals,” Phelan said post-match.

“If [Nerang] go one and two-nil up against sides they’re going to be very difficult to beat because they’re difficult to break down – you’re trying to play through them, they get pretty compact and they won a lot of second balls today.”

Nerang Eagles number 10, Luke Marsh, juggles his way through a scrambling Bureligh Heads defense and his pivotal performance to bag a goal and assist in the Eagle 4-1 thumping of the defending champions at Nerang on Sunday. Photo: Luke Sorensen.

Nerang coach Lee Vernon believed the win marked a directional shift after the Eagles’ last few pre-season friendly matches against Brisbane sides ended with disappointing losses.

Vernon also lauded the courage of his players with many forced to play a full match due to injuries.

“It’s been so long since we’ve been out to play a competitive game, we played Coomera and we’ve had that four-nil loss with the three red cards sitting over our heads for months,” he said.

“It’s about momentum and obviously we’ll take plenty out of today, but we’ve got a really tough couple of weeks ahead.”