To start with though the score in the title of this posting is actually a bit misleading. It should read:
strong Mossley XI 1 - 1 strong Droylsden XI and
Mossley's trialists 0 - 2 Droylsden's trialists
The first half wasn't too bad. It wasn't a classic, far from it, but it had a reasonably competitive edge to it that was sorely missing after the break.
Mossley took a fourth minute lead through Mattie Kay and despite a decent amount of possession over the remainder of the half, there were very few chances that followed it; a situation not entirely helped by Nathan Neequaye having to plough a lonely furrow up front against four rather large Conference North defenders.
As such it was the visitors who always looked the more likely to add further goals to the score sheet. That they only managed to do so once was down to that trusty old Mossley combination of some good defending, good goalkeeping and a fair smattering of luck.
I have to confess that I'm not a big fan of friendly matches. If it wasn't for a sense of loyalty and duty I'd probably reinforce my standing as not being a 'true supporter' by giving them a miss. I understand why they're there and what the benefits are but there's nothing really in it for the average spectator. And it's forty five minutes like those which followed after the break that do nothing to dissuade me from my low opinion of them.
The passing of the interval saw both sides make sweeping changes to their line-ups and the game became the proverbial damp squib - even if it did contain a couple of goals.
With so many new faces on the pitch Mossley lost any semblance of structure they had (for one extended period we appeared to be playing a revolutionary 4-6-0 formation) and neither of the two keepers Droylsden used in the second period had a save to make.
That's not to say the Bloods were any better. They began the half with a series of over the top challenges before edging themselves ahead with a well worked goal. Late in the game they capitalised on a lack of communication in the Mossley back line to add a third and that was that.
The summary of what happened between the 46th and 90th minutes being: two goals, a few bad tackles and an awful lot of nothing in between. As you can now see for yourself in the... actually, I'm loathe to use the term highlights:
Apologies for noise of the wind - it couldn't be helped.
If I was looking at the game from a Droylsden point of view I could have probably eked a few more paragraphs out of proceedings, but from a Mossley perspective there really isn't much to write about. Some players did well, some didn't. It was definitely one of those games in which the managers will have got more out of it than those who paid to watch.
Having touched briefly on my dislike of friendly games above, I'd like to point you in the direction of this article which pretty much mirrors my feelings about them.
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