Off to: Grantham

Two games, two defeats and to Grantham we go for our third game back in the Unibond Premier.

It's also the Lincolnshire clubs third game back in the old NPL (the 'Gingerbreads' having been shunted sideways from the Southern Premier League) and like us are finding it difficult in getting used to familiar surroundings again. It would be nice though if things picked up from where we left off over twenty years ago because, unlike matches against our previous opponents from Crosby, club though we've more often than not had the upper hand over Grantham.

Both sides enter the game looking for their first points of the season but on home soil and with a midweek home defeat to Hednesford (where the opponents grabbed a winner when reduced to nine men) still fresh in the memory, Grantham will be the team under the most pressure to break their duck. A brief look at the Grantham forum shows that there are quite a few disgruntled fans already and this is something which could prove extremely beneficial for Mossley if the home side don't get off to a good start.

Prediction: I know I have a reputation for being pessimistic but, hold on to your hats, I think this is going to be three points for us. At worst we'll share the spoils but I'm convinced that the big, fat zero under our points column will have disappeared by 5:00pm on Saturday.

And frankly a victory will in some small way go towards punishing Grantham for inflicting the country with one of the smuggest, smarmiest, most egotistical people ever to walk our green and pleasent land. Of course I'm talking about Nicholas Parsons, the man who single handedly makes Radio Four's Just A Minute live up to its title by being precisely how long it will be before you switch him off.

And of course Grantham is also the birthplace of little known politician Margaret Thatcher, the caterpillar track and part-time scientist pioneer and full-time fruit loop Isaac Newton (he stuck huge needles behind his eyes to see what was there along with many other really quite, quite mad incidents) had his schooling there. Biology obviously not being on the curriculum at King's School.