Lancaster City 0 - 0 Mossley

And according to the few comments about the game that exist from both sets of supporters, zero was also as high as the game got on the entertainment scale.

Nevertheless, as dull and forgettable as the game apparently appeared to be, the result brings to an end Mossley's sparkling run of four straight defeats which meant the whole thing wasn't a complete waste of time. Whether those who actually made the lengthy trip up to "the hanging town" hold the same opinion isn't for me to pass comment.

It's not as though having missed this match (or rather not having the slightest inclination to attend it this particular weekend) I got off lightly either.

In order to fill what would have otherwise been a blank afternoon, I went to watch Curzon Ashton play Ossett. And with the power of hindsight I wish I'd left the afternoon blank.

To give the game its due though the first half was relatively interesting as Ossett played the hosts off the park for forty five minutes. Unfortunately for the them the opening period went on a touch longer and Hasim Deen headed Curzon into an undeserved lead in injury time. The second half had barely started either when the home side doubled their lead and killed the game off.

What followed was three quarters of an hour of tedium in rapidly cooling conditions; the ambient temperature dropping from tepid to freezing in that special and frighteningly fast way it does on Ashton Moss.

To give you some idea of how bad an uninteresting the game became, midway through the second half one of the Curzon centre halves sidled over the touchline towards where we stood and asked us why we weren't watching Mossley that afternoon.

This slowly turned into a lengthy discussion about travelling distances, the Lilywhites poor run of form and how fortunate Curzon had been not to be behind at half-time, all while the ball was in play less than half the length of the pitch away.

Yes, that's how bad things had got - the players were striking up conversations with spectators for something to do.

What other little entertainment there was mainly involved counting the crowd (which didn't take long) and listing the various other better things we could have been doing that afternoon. And, oh, was it a long, long, long list...