Mossley 2 - 1 Newcastle Blue Star

Just over two hours after Manchester City had seen off Newcastle United at Eastlands in the Premiership, Mossley sent the Geordies non-league neighbours Blue Star back home to the north-east equally empty handed.

When you decide to play the offside trap, one of the fundamental components of it is that the defence move as one in a straight line.

The first five minutes were spent almost exclusively in the Mossley half of the pitch and but for two saves from Ashley Connor and a goal line clearance from Gareth Hamlet, the Lilywhites could have been looking at a real uphill battle over the course of the remaining 85 minutes.

Instead it was Mossley themselves that took the lead in the sixth minute with their first attack. Blue Star keeper Dan Lowson made a complete a hash of a simple clearance and screwed the ball out to the touchline where Paul Quinn was stood. Spotting that Lowson was in no hurry to take up a position closer to his goal, the Mossley winger immediately launched a looping shot from 35 yards that seemed to take forever to drop under the crossbar and put the Lilywhites ahead.

Due to my failure to get to grips with a borrowed camera, I don't have any decent action shots of this match. However I did get a decent picture of an empty goal area later on on in the match and taking a cue from a current news story, hey presto! Mossley go in front.

The visitors began the season as one of the favourites for promotion, due in no small part to a weekly wage bill rumoured to be around £7,000 a week. Apparently though that alleged sum of money isn't enough to assemble a defence that can organise itself into a straight line because Mossley's search for further goals was being ably assisted by their opponents ridiculously inept interpretation of how to play the offside trap. Either that or they use boomerangs as rulers on Tyneside.

Instead of moving forward as a unit they were the very definition of 'higgledy-piggledy', allowing the home side to advance without the threat of being halted by an assistant referee's flag and carve out further openings. Daryl Weston was inches away from increasing the lead with a powerful drive from distance before Kitson Gayle went agonisingly close to applying the finishing touch to a move that started from the left back position. Then from almost exactly the same spot from which Quinn had scored earlier, Paul Garvey launched another looping shot over the head of a wandering Lowson, only this time the ball dropped into the side netting.

Before the first period was brought to a close, both sides were on the receiving end of some peculiar offside decisions. Firstly Newcastle were given offside even though their forward was chasing down a Mossley back pass and that was followed by Paul Garvey was flagged despite being in his own half of the pitch at the time.

If you can find anything to be critical of about Mossley in this performance (and it's a small one) it's that the game should have been over as a contest long before the incidents that would transpire midway though the half put the outcome back in the balance.

Immediately after the restart Gayle and Garvey combined to put Lee Blackshaw through, only for the winger to fire wide of the far post. A minute later Blackshaw turned provider with a low cross along the edge of the six yard box that the outstretched leg of Gayle could only direct on to the cross bar.

The latter chance also saw Blue Star's captain, Birks, leave the pitch with an injury picked up during an attempt to stop Gayle. Not only was this met by a sigh of relief from the home support (he had been Newcastle's best player by some margin) but probably from the referee as well, having had him sit almost little devil like on his shoulder for the entire game questioning every decision he made.

The precariousness of Mossley's lead was highlighted not long after when Mossley's defence collectively went to sleep and gave Gordon the chance to run 45 yards towards the Mossley goal with no one in pursuit. Ashley Connor however kept his cool and stayed on his feet long enough to panic the Newcastle forward into shooting straight at him as his options dwindled.

At the midway point of the half Mossley were awarded what even I, as a partisan match reporter, have to describe as a soft penalty when the referee decided that Andrews had deliberately handled the ball. However, whilst the faces may have changed over the summer, the curse of Mossley's inability to score from the penalty remains; Lee Connor becoming the latest in a long line of players in a white shirt to miss from the spot.

The match then descended into controversy when Lowson came flying out of his goal to deal with a cross but in doing so missed the ball and punched his own defender in the head. To make matters worse his momentum also saw him send not only his unfortunate team mate to the floor in a heap but Paul Garvey too. With the players in a pile on the ground the game carried on but Lowson started a scuffle with Garvey that ended with him failing, by a matter of millimetres, to connect a swinging fist to the Mossley players chin.

Play was immediately halted and after discussions with his assistant the official peculiarly awarded the visitors a free-kick, punishing Mossley for a non-existent offence and leaving Lowson still on the pitch without even so much as a ticking off, let alone a card of any colour. A very lucky man considering that he also went unpunished after throwing the ball at the official following the awarding of the penalty.

The injustice Mossley were no doubt feeling was compounded two minutes later, the 70th ,minute of the game, when Newcastle were the recipients of a 'soft' free-kick within shooting distance of the Lilywhites' goal. With the referee now deciding to give the illusion of being in charge he chose to lecture and yellow card a bemused looking Martin Allison and whilst he did, Blue Star took the opportunity to move the ball a good five or six yards closer to goal. Mossley's protests were ignored and the free-kick was flighted over the heads of the Mossley wall by Chris Emms and into the back of the net.

Last season this sequence of events would have seen Mossley crumble faster than an over-dunked digestive but Mossley 07/08 are made of stronger stuff (even if the supporters nerves aren't) and within three minutes they were back in front.

With the Blue Star defences attempts at playing offside continuing to look like an extended Chuckle Brothers sketch, Lee Blackshaw was able to control Daryl Weston's lofted through pass without the fear of being flagged by the linesman. With Lowson having taken up his favoured position of 'stranded in no-man's land', Blackshaw produced a chip that professional sport journalists (i.e. bitter alcoholics with more axes to grind than a Viking blacksmith prior to a pillaging expedition) tend to always describe as delightful and the ball bounced twice before nestling in the back of the net.

Almost from the restart Newcastle were an instinctive Ashley Connor save away from levelling again but the more desperate the visitors grew the greater Mossley's grip on the game tightened, and as time ticked away the home team had the chances to make the scoreline more emphatic. Martin Allison headed over from a Richard Conway corner and Andrews pulled the kind of contortions not seen outside of the Cirque De Soleil on the line to stop Gareth Hamlets close range shot from going in.

The scoreline may say that there was only goal in it but everyone who was there knows that the difference was greater than that. This was an extremely impressive performance from Mossley and the rapturous applause that they left the field to was fully warranted. Creativity, passion, resilience; this performance (and that of the last few preceding league matches) had everything Mossley fans have wanted to see in the side they support for years.

It would be wrong to single one or two players out for a special mention after they'd all performed so well, so I won't. No buts either.

As for big spending Newcastle, well... apart from the goalkeeping, defending, over physical approach (the backs of Mossley's shirts are going to take some washing to get the hand prints of Blue Star's players out of them), badgering of the officials, etc. they looked well worth the money that, and I repeat the word allegedly, is being spent on them. Yes, that should be read sarcastically.

However, may be they are a good team and what became evident to us over the last twelve months also applies to visiting clubs: Seel Park and expensively assembled sides don't mix. At all.