Ten months after it began on a sunkissed afternoon in Dukinfield, the 2009/10 season came to an end for Mossley80 on a cold night in Glossop.
And thankfully it was a decent end too as the unbridled misery and boredom of the last two games witnessed were brushed away in a flurry of end-to-end football (well, mostly the end Glossop were attacking) in the Vodkat Reserve League Cup Final.
Yes, a reserve team cup final - we were that desperate for a game of football.
You know its going to be a good game when there's a goal after only 25 seconds and that's how long it took Glossop to take the lead. They kicked-off, ran forward and scored - as simple as that. A second was not long in coming and there should have been another four or five added to the total before the interval. It was a game the description 'one-sided' was invented for.
The second period looked to be heading down the path signposted 'Foregone Conclusion' until, much to what I should imagine was everybody's surprise, Padiham pulled a goal back. Whether it should have stood or not can be argued about for a long time (there were at least three fouls committed as they worked the ball up the pitch) but it certainly made the game that bit more interesting. It could have gotten even more interesting had Padiham hit the net and not the crossbar from a yard out on their next attack.
It was a costly miss too as less than a few minutes later the home team killed off their opponents hopes of a comeback with another well worked goal. They could have added more as Padiham all but gave up hopes of rescuing the game. There was still time though for a pitch invasion by a dog (which is never not amusing) and one last 'did the officials get it right' moment. The latter deserving of a paragraph to itself so...
The referee stopped play so a Glossop player could receive treatment for an injury. From the drop ball to restart the game, a Padiham player kicked the ball towards the Glossop keeper who missed it and in doing so allowed it to roll into the net. Rather than a goal though the referee awarded a goal kick. Now I'm not going to say he made the wrong decision, purely because I don't know and I can't find the definitive answer to the situation anywhere. Therefore if you know whether it was a correct or incorrect call, please don't hesitate to share your knowledge of the rulings which cover this infuriating game we know as Association Football.
After much discussion about the weather, holidays, the awfulness of prime-time television and how some of the players in the Glossop side would not look out of place in the Hillmen's first team (and could fit rather nicely into Mossley's starting eleven too) the final whistle blew and the season was over; another year of football done and dusted with.
Of course there's still the World Cup but it's no real substitute for standing on a wind and rain swept terrace in the back end of nowhere, watching a game of football so poor that you contemplate committing seppuku with a corner flag pole, is it?
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