Mossley P - P Leek Town

With Mossley’s game at home to Leek surprisingly falling foul of the weather in a remarkably early pitch inspection, it was off to the Tameside (spit) Stadium for those of us desperate to fill up a blank Saturday afternoon with a game of football, in order to watch Curzon Ashton take on Atherton LR. And it appeared that quite a few other people without a game to go to had had the same idea too judging by the crowd figure of 162 (which included ten Mossley supporters), an increase of over 50% on the attendance for Curzon’s last game.

Once the teams had made their way onto the pitch to the sound of Gary Glitter (!?), there was a presentation of a silver salver to Curzon defender David Birch to commemorate his 250th game for the club; an event which led to the visiting Lilywhites commenting on whether Mossley’s squad would get the same if they manage 25 games for the club. Sarcasm or satire? You decide.

As for the game, once Mike Norton had opened the scoring for the home side in the fourteenth minute the result was never in question, the match becoming the one way affair that 7-0 drubbings tend to be.

It was also the second time in successive weeks that Curzon had hit seven goals at home which takes some doing. However because the opposition has been so poor in both matches it's very hard to judge how good Curzon actually are. They do have some good movement off the ball and they like to keep it on the deck but that's more than balanced out by a defence who have the charming habit of running into one another and then falling over. Really, it was like a vaudeville routine.

Fortunately for Curzon on Saturday L.R.'s attack had all the cutting edge of an inflatable banana. In fact it was somewhat comforting to note watching L.R. that (even with my bad back, a complete lack of fitness and no discernible football skills whatsoever) there's still a chance I could make a go of it as a footballer in the NWCL.