Mossley 5 - 3 Hyde United

The final part of most trilogies these days tends to be the weakest of the three.

Take the movies for instance. Spiderman 3 is a bloated facsimile of the previous two entries in the franchise. After the darkness of the Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi climaxes with a Galactic Empire being overthrown by teddy bears. Happily this game. Mossley's third in a week against local Blue Square North opposition, bucked the trend. Not that it didn't come very close to being a Mission:Impossible III.

Following two good, incident packed games against Stalybridge and Droylsden, this match with Hyde looked to have run out of steam midway through the second half; the visitors lead neither looked like being pegged back or added to. With so little in the way of goalmouth action from either side there was more than one supporter looking at their watch, willing the minute hand to move round a little faster.

This meant that what happened in the final quarter of the game came as something of a shock: a 2 - 1 pre-season run out suddenly became an eight goal thriller with five goals in the final fifteen minutes, and four of them coming from the boot of Danny Egan.

The game kicked into life with Leon Henry heading narrowly wide before a cock-up between Dootson and one of his centre halves gave substitute Egan the easiest of tap-ins to pull Mossley level. Minutes later the same player put Mossley ahead with a sweetly struck volley back across the face of the goal from a flicked-on Lee Blackshaw cross, before he completed his hat-trick by applying the finish to another Blackshaw cross.

All Hyde had to show in response to Mossley as they moved up through the gears and threatened to run riot was a close range shot that substitute keeper Mottershead did very well to save, but with three minutes left they pulled the deficit back to one with a well struck shot from the edge of the box.

Any thoughts of the Tigers snatching an equaliser were quickly banished though when Egan, saving his best till last, struck a looping volley over Dootson's replacement for Mossley's fifth and his fourth of the game.

But what happened in the first half I hear you cry? Oh, you're not? Well I'll tell you anyway.

The opening forty-five, while not reaching the heights the game was to touch in the second period, was watchable and not without its share of incidents. And just as in the previous friendlies, Mossley's opening goal arrived with little warning. Like Hyde, the Lilwhites had posed no real threat to their opponents goal when, out of nothing, Phil Charnock cracked an inch perfect low shot from 30 yards through a group of players and past the dive of Craig Dootson.

A goal in front, Mossley started to press forward a bit more to try and push home their advantage but twice before the break they were caught flat at the back, allowing Hyde to go into the interval ahead through a couple of very well taken goals, particularly Matthew Tipton's chipped effort a minute before they all trooped off for the orange slices. What happened next you've already read about.

All the good points from Mossley's games over the past week were in evidence again in this one: the desire to keep the ball on the deck, the willingness to shoot when the opportunity presents itself rather than trying to walk the ball in the net, the continual closing down of the opposition when not in possession and the fact that the players seemed to be enjoying themselves.

It's still pre-season though but even if we take just a tiny bit of what we've shown so far into the games that matter, it's almost a certainty that we won't be spending January through to April anxiously eyeing the results around the foot of the table.

To be honest I've no idea why I bothered writing any of the above as you can it all for yourself in the following clips. All eight goals, near misses, good saves and a couple of challenges that were way O.T.T. for a friendly, uploaded to YouTube for your viewing pleasure:




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