Season Start - Part Two

It feels like its been a long time coming but the home legs of the new season get under way like they did last year: with a Tuesday evening game against local (-ish) opposition.

After avoiding what seemed at one point like a nailed on relegation through a massive post-Christmas turnaround, I dare say that like us Radcliffe will be hoping for a slightly better season from the get go this time.

In an attempt to do so they’ve made a managerial change and ex-Chorley boss Gary Luckza has been charged with bringing the form Borough showed in the knock out competitions last year (they won the Manchester Premier Cup as well as being losing finalists in the Presidents Cup) into their league campaign.

Actually manager is the wrong term. What Radcliffe have actually done is appoint a Director of Football. Yes, the title that’s used by a growing number of clubs in order to make them seem modern and progressive, yet only succeeds in making the look pretentious, has now made its way down to the Unibond First Division North. What next? The P.A. announcer being labelled a Business/Customer Liaison Officer? The players becoming Consumer Experience Specialists?

Whatever it is, football will still have to go some distance to beat the title currently bestowed on the workers at Subway by their employers: sandwich artists.

Keeping up with the news at Stainton Park has been somewhat difficult this close season due to i) Radcliffe’s web site undergoing the transformation into a flashy yet generic and soulless internet presence and ii) the club forum continually attempting to install a virus on my computer every time I tried logging on to it.

From the information I can gather though the only familiar faces in Borough’s likely line-up is Mike Flynn, the former Stockport County player who played four games for Mossley on loan from Hyde in 2006.

The corresponding fixture last season took place in the middle of Mossley’s long spell without a win (or Winter as it’s more commonly known as) with the Lilywhites almost snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not that that description actually narrows the events of last year down any. In the end the sighs of relief that greeted the final whistle were evidence enough that the home support were happy to settle for a 2 – 2 draw.

While Mossley were away winning in Clitheroe, the season got off to a less than auspicious start for Borough on Saturday with a 2-0 defeat at home to Ossett Albion which you can read about here. But at this early stage of the season any bearing those results will have on the one in this game are somewhat negligible. Still we live in hope...