If you wanted to go the whole hog and have the full Mossley vs Warrington experience then I suggest reading what comes next standing fully clothed in a running shower while one person (having taken sensible precautions to avoid either of you getting electrocuted) blasts a hairdryer in your face. Actually that seems infinitely more fun than what the 156 hardy (or mad - the words are interchangeable in this instance) souls stood on the wind and rain swept terraces of Seel Park at the weekend had.
Things didn't get off to a great start for Mossley as it was the visitors who were the side to find the back of the net first and no-one would argue that it wasn’t deserved on the balance of play; Warrington having dominated all of the sixty seconds of the game that had elapsed since it kicked off. They’d already spurned one golden opportunity to put themselves in front before a cross from the right was met by former Mossley forward Gavin Salmon and he did something he had an awful lot of trouble doing at Seel Park while wearing a white shirt: score.
Why an opposing centre forward was stood unmarked on the edge of the six yard box wouldn’t be too pressing a question if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s becoming one of the motifs of the season. If I had the time (or to be more accurate, if I could be bothered) I’d go back through the reports I’ve written this season and count the number of times we’ve conceded a goal through an opposing player loitering around in the goalmouth on his lonesome. I do know it’s enough times to consider assigning a sentence describing such an incident its own keyboard short cut on my laptop.
Despite there still being the best part of another hour and half of the match to go Warrington seemed to decide that scoring once was more than enough attacking effort exerted for the day and proceeded to defend their lead. Just how determined they were to head back home with a victory obtained through solitary goal was made evident when – and this is not an exaggeration or a little white lie for comedic effect (as if this blog does funnies!) – Town’s snood adorned keeper received his final warning from the referee for time wasting in only the fifth minute of the match.
It meant the onus was on the home team to break down the extremely well organised Town defence and the way the Lilywhites have been playing recently it should have been a challenge they were more than capable of rising to. Unfortunately it turned out that it was the Mossley side from the opening months of the season that was on show instead: the one lacking spark, creativity and, most importantly of all, width. Every attacking move was funnelled down the centre of the pitch and broken up with ease by the wall of red shirts it constantly running into. On the few occasions the ball wasn’t being worked laboriously down the middle it was flying above every body’s heads and into the arms of the keeper – the folly of trying to play the long ball when you’ve got a gale force wind at your back.
In the 27th minute however there was a brief flicker of inspiration during a Mossley attack. A pass went ‘outside’ rather than ‘inside’ and led to a cross from the left that was met by the head of Chris Rowney and directed into the net via the right hand upright. An effective yet simple passage of play that should have set a precedent for the Lilywhites approach to the remainder of the game. It should have but it didn’t. It proved to be an aberration as despite the success in doing something a bit different the home side returned to ploughing a furrow between the centre spot and the ‘D’ on the edge of the Town; a ploy which resulted in Mossley not having another shot either on or off target for the remainder of the game. In fact you’d be hard pressed to call any of their further adventures into the Warrington half of the pitch attacks.
That’s not to say the visitors were doing any better. Forced out of their defensive posture by the need to find another goal to retake the lead, they struggled to find their first minute form. That said they should have retaken the lead just before the interval when Chris Gahgan was put through on goal but the left winger chipped the ball over both Peter Collinge and the crossbar when finding the back of the net looked a whole lot easier. This turned out to be their last effort aimed towards the Mossley goal so you can imagine what the second half was like with neither side mustering up a shot in anger or even mild vexation.
Actually don’t imagine it because not even a collective of the most pessimistic and gloomiest of minds could conceive a period of football as bad as the one that passed for the second half of this match. It was atrocious and grimmer than the wind and rain filled skies it was being played under. The tedium induced daze the supporters were in broken only by the occasional moment of self-awareness when the realisation of better things they could be doing with forty five minutes of their short lives slowly dawned.
If the second half had one highlight (other than the whistle that mercifully signalled its end) then it was this:
To give the visitors some credit they did provide the lion’s share of what little football there was in the second period; a couple of dangerous crosses and two moments when a shot at goal instead of an extra pass would have been more beneficial to their cause, but apart from that there was little to dissuade anyone watching that both sides had subconsciously decided to settle for a point: Mossley happy for a draw against a very good side and Warrington equally pleased with a non-negative result at what was until the midweek games one of the form teams in the division. It’s just a pity they couldn’t agree on the result at half-time, informed the crowd and let us go home early in the knowledge that we weren’t going to miss anything.
Match fixing may be wrong on many levels but being able to agree on an result so the supporters can go home early and dry their wet pants (because of the wind and rain!) is one aspect to it that's cruelly overlooked by the do-gooders.
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