A GOALLESS draw in a scrappy, bitty Nationwide League game in a filthy afternoon's weather may not sound much to write home about.

But for Alan Ball, still trying to shoo away the nightmare of the Crystal Palace defeat, it was as good an act of rehabilitation as a month in the Betty Ford clinic.

So Pompey rode their luck a bit, with Rangers knocking on wood three times. But manager Ball will be able to disregard that.

Never mind how it's achieved and how much skin is left on the teeth, a clean sheet on the road at an in-form team is a good result.

More importantly for Ball was the way it was achieved at Lofuts Road. QPR are not Walsall and there was never going to be a repeat of the midweek goal feast. Instead, it was a hard-fought, tight, tense affair, with no quarter asked, or given, especially in midfield.

Some of the football on offer was poor, with both sides guilty of giving away possession cheaply and Rangers' keeper Lee Harper was not forced into crash-action all afternoon.

In fact, it took Pompey 72 minutes to carve out their first chance, when they were left wishing somebody taller than Sammy Igoe was on the end of Lee Bradbury's cross.

And only in the closing moments did Thomas Thogersen flash a header across goal.

But there are times when a team just have to grind away and it was an afternoon for that.

Rangers offer plenty of muscle and effort but fancy football doesn't exactly flow from their pores. In Rob Steiner they had the most dangerous striker on parade and he twice came within inches of depriving Pompey.

Pompey's central defensive trio had policed him adequately throughout the first half until a lapse of concentration on 56 minutes saw the striker latch on to Danny Maddix's ball over the top.

Steiner lifted his effort over the advancing Petterson and as the ball crashed downwards from the underside of the bar, it bounced the right side of the goal-line for Pompey - but the wrong side for Rangers.

After bulleting a near-post header inches wide, Steiner climbed at the back stick to plant one against the post and when Tim Breacker's low cross squirmed through a ruck of players and cannoned back off the outside of a post, one sensed Rangers could have played until Wasps' next home game and would not have socred.

Thogersen produced another impressive performance as the screen in front of the defence while Igoe turned in a typically frustrating one.

He flitted and found space but all too often failed to deliver the killer pass his licence to roam gave him.

Jason Crowe had an encouraging afternoon going forward but young Jermaine Darlington's pace and trickery tested out his defensive capabilities.

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