At 40 Miles, Bamber Bridge Too Far?

It's to Preston we head next and our fourth ever visit to Bamber Bridge’s Irongate ground.

Bridge have had an extremely impressive start to the season and seven wins out of a possible eight in September was enough to win them the ‘Team of the Month’ award; something they’ll be presented with prior to kick off.

However that mini run came to an end last Monday night with a 2-0 defeat in front of over 200 people at Curzon. Yes, over 200 people! And no, I've no idea where they've suddenly appeared from either. Who knows, maybe they've altered the 'this way to Ikea' signs to point towards the ground, Dick Dastardly like, or watching them now counts towards the hours you do on community service?

There's no doubt that this fixture will be a tough test for Mossley but there is precedent for meetings between the two sides when Bridge have had an impressive start to the season. In 1995 Mossley were drawn to play at Irongate in the FA Cup at a time when the Preston based side were not only one division higher, but unbeaten and top of the league. That troubled Mossley not a jot as they swept them aside with a superb performance that, sadly, was to be one of the last ' good football' displays that season; Paul Cuddy's departure as joint-manager not long after allowing Kevin Keelan's long on ball, short on style tactics to come to the fore.

Our last visit was on a very cold January night back in 2006 when two first half goals (both from Chris Downey) were enough to claim all three points despite a spirited second period comeback by the hosts. The pitch was also in a rough old state on that occasion so it’ll be interesting to see how much its improved - if at all. Hopefully it will be a lot too!

And all being well we won't have a hangover from Tuesday's match at Clitheroe. As gutting as it was to concede two goals in the final seven minutes, life moves on and it will do in a considerably happier way if we can repeat the display we put on in the middle section of that game. Only for a bit longer this time ;).

Prediction: As I get comments at matches about putting down in these little sections that we won’t win, I’m not going to say anything.

Oh, go on then - a draw.