Mossley80

Mossley 6 - 2 Ossett Albion

2011-09-17T12:44:00.000+01:00

Your eyes do not deceive you. The scoreline that makes up the heading to this post is correct. It may have taken a month but Mossley have finally registered their first win of the season and did so in (what the unwritten law of UK football match reporting compels me to label as) emphatic fashion.

Just as one bad result isn't a portent for months of doom, gloom and despair, one good result isn't a sign of a renaissance. I've no doubt whatsoever that this is probably going to sound like I'm being picky or purposefully negative but all the good things about Mossley's performance in this game are balanced out by the poor quality of their opponents. And I'm being generous in labelling them poor.

In Ossett's defence (and the only defence that can be associated with Ossett in regards to this game) they are in the midst of an injury crisis which has left them without the services of nine regular starters. However, as the cliché goes you can only beat what's in front of you and the Lilywhites beat what was in front of them well, one or two scares aside.

I do have more thoughts about this game jotted down on a piece of paper but as the week has gone on the will to arrange them into a cohesive structure has been slowly sapped by other events. So instead of presenting you with some musings about formations, tactics and an elephant that has appeared in the room, I'm just going to finish with some video footage of all six of Mossley's goals; a change of plan which some of you will no doubt believe to be a bit of a blessing:

Runcorn Linnets 4 - 0 Mossley

2011-09-10T11:24:00.000+01:00

To put it simply:
If there's a Mossley fan around who was surprised about this result then good luck in finding them. The 4-0 score line might have taken a few people aback but the defeat to a mid table NWCFL side was expected; it was as non-shocking as cup shocks are ever likely to get. There's a report on the Runcorn site here if you want the details on Mossley's capitulation to a side from a lower division but as you can imagine it doesn't make for anything other than grim reading.

Bottom of the league, out of the FA Cup, an increasing number regulars missing from the terraces and we're barely into the second week of September: can the season get any worse than this?

That was a rhetorical question by the way.

Mossley 0 - 0 Runcorn Linnets

2011-09-06T15:07:00.000+01:00

If I was to write the report this match deserved you'd have finished reading it by now. In fact there'd have been nothing to read apart from the heading - just six or seven inches of white space. It started, it stopped and in the ninety minutes in between little of any consequence happened. The supposed magic of the FA Cup was certainly not with this game.

Runcorn had the better of the opening 22 and a half minutes, which included a couple of vociferous appeals for a penalty, while Mossley were on top for the remainder of the first period but only had a Cavell Coo shot directly at Linnet's keeper Richie Mottram to show for efforts. The teams then left the field for the break, came back on again and proceeded to cancel one another out for three quarters of an hour.

Oops! Sorry, there were a couple of moments worth mentioning. Kayde Coppin hit the post when one of his free-kicks took a huge deflection of a Runcorn defender and Martin Pearson produced a fantastic save that the referee did the huge disservice by failing to recognise it and awarding a goal kick instead. The less said about one incident in the second half though when a series of increasingly ridiculous passes across the Lilywhites back line allowed a Runcorn player clean through on goal, the better. Thankfully for Mossley the Linnets player who was the beneficiary of this generosity skewed his shot so far wide of the target that the goalkeeper didn't even have to attempt a save. And therein lies the reason why this game has gone to a replay: neither sides possession of an attack worthy of the noun.

In Mossley's case this didn't come as much of a surprise once the team line-ups were announced and it was revealed that we'd be starting the match with a centre half playing as a centre forward. The first week of September and we're already struggling to find round pegs to fit into round holes. Happily the visitors to Seel Park were just as woeful in front of goal and that's why there is at least some good news: we didn't lose! If that doesn't sate your appetite for reasons to be cheerful about, how about the fact we weren't overwhelmed and looked more than a match for an eighth placed team in the North West Counties League, which does bode well for next season.

Things You Thought You'd Never See Again

2011-09-01T14:12:00.000+01:00

#1: Mossley topping a table

Okay, it's not the club and rather the town itself but in these thin times we can but dream. In case you're wondering the image is from the BBC quiz Pointless and yes, I'm well aware of the humour that can be had in the marrying of Mossley and the show's title.

Mossley 0 - 4 Curzon Ashton

2011-08-31T17:57:00.000+01:00

I don't know about you but even though August isn't yet a footnote in the annals of history, I think it may already be time to write off Mossley's title chances for this season. And possibly our play-off hopes too.

I'm not going to go into any great detail about the mechanics of the match, primarily because I wasn't there. I had the option of attending the game or an early evening out with friends; it had to be one or the other. In times gone past I almost certainly would have opted for the football but in these days of financial austerity I don't want to use what painfully little disposable income I have on paying to watch something akin to a slow motion car crash, which is what Mossley's last home match was and what their latest one threatened to be. As the evening with friends had the promise of some enjoyment it was that I opted for as the 'e' word is something that hasn't been synonymous with the Lilywhites for a while now. Unless of course you're a supporter of the opposition. And lo and behold if it wasn't the visiting Curzon fans who got the most bang for their buck in the latest instalment of the Lilywhites 2011/12 relegation push. (Before anyone gets on their high horse, of course I'm being facetious when I say relegation push. For the time being at least anyway)

Curzon's 16 man squad contained 11 players who have worn the Lilywhites shirt, many of whom as recently as last season. The departure of these players to our near neighbours in the summer brought numerous jilted lover-esque cries from some supporters of "they weren't very good anyway" and that their replacements were so much better. It wasn't for as simple a reason as that they wanted to play for a manager who they'd enjoyed playing under before or that they wanted a change of scenery. Oh no, they were "mercenaries." Which begs the question as to whether the supporters who believe this think their replacements didn't have to leave a club to join us; that we're the only club who source our players from a pool of Corinthian spirited idealists. Anyhoo, the fixture meant it was an early chance to put those claims to the test: were the ex-Lilywhites rubbish and the new Lilywhites a lot better? A glimpse at the score line answers that question.

While I didn't watch the game in the flesh I did manage to watch it via Twitter for an hour via the various tweetings from the neutrals and not-so-neutrals in attendance and none of it made for happy reading. In the hour before kick-off I began to get this weird feeling that Mossley would upset the apple cart but when @aaronflan posted the team line-ups prior to the start of the match it disappeared. A whippet-like centre forward in the shape of Kristian Dennis up against the far from whippet-like central defensive pairing Mossley were starting with was only going to lead to one thing if the former was up for the match and sure enough, at four minutes past three the first of a succession of tweets popped up on my time line to say that Dennis had put Curzon a goal ahead having beaten his marker for speed. Eight minutes later news of his second strike of the afternoon came through along with some far from glowing appraisals of Mossley's performance.

Eventually it came time to head off to my preferred destination of the day and while stood at the bus stop I heard a cheer roll down from the hill which Seel Park sits atop of. In a rare outbreak of optimism I headed to Twitter on my phone to see if Mossley had embarked on a comeback. Nope. The noise I'd heard had been to greet Kristian Dennis's hat-trick. Seven minutes (and still no bus) later there was another eruption. That late on in the game it's unlikely a Mossley goal would have elicited such a reaction and sure enough it had heralded Curzon's fourth, scored by another ex-Lilywhite Michael Fish.

The 4-0 result (a second successive defeat at home by the same scoreline) meant that Curzon moved to the top of the table on goal difference and Mossley slipped, or rather fell with a bump, to the bottom of the Evo-Stik First Division North by virtue of having fewer points than everybody else. And so after six games of the new campaign the Lilywhites sit 21 places and 16 points below their Bank Holiday opponents who, lest we forget, comprise of players who aren't good enough for us according to some. Maybe it's just me but at the moment I'm not getting any sense of progress being made, especially as we look like heading into a risky FA Cup fixture against an unbeaten side from a lower division with only one centre forward at the club. Lengthy paragraphs about these issues though are for another, rainy day.

As for me I did have an enjoyable evening, not that any of you are asking. I ended up seeing the new Conan the Barbarian film and while it's not the greatest film ever made there are far worse ways of spending 90 minutes, naming no examples. There was plenty of killing in it too so I did eventually end up seeing one massacre on the day and paid less than £8 for the privilege too.

Skelmersdale United 3 - 1 Mossley

2011-08-29T11:29:00.000+01:00

There's not really much to say about this game other than that we've managed to get our annual defeat at Skelmersdale out of the way much earlier in the season than we usually do. It's normally a cold night in March or April when we turn up at Stormy Corner and get a pasting but this year we got the opportunity to help Skem's goal difference while enjoying a bit of sun too.

Or at least I'm going to assume it was sunny. It could well have been bucketing it down and blowing a force ten gale for all I know. What I do know for a fact though is that for the first time since the home side moved to their new ground, Mossley managed to get through ninety minutes there without conceding four or more goals which makes it the first genuine positive of the season! Huzzah!

It's surprising just how much joy there is to be had in these infinitesimally small moments in football when your hopes for a season are virtually non-existent. All we have to do now is beat Curzon at home for once and the 2011/12 season, whether we're relegated or not, can be claimed a success on some level.

Back to this game though and for a short period of time the unlikely looked achievable: a win at Skelmersdale. A goal from Tom Ingham on the cusp of the break gave the Lilywhites the lead at the half way point but the hopes of gaining three points at one of our bogey grounds started to slip away early in the second period. Rob McIntosh and Paul Woolcott put the home side ahead within five minutes of the restart and Shaun Tuck administered the match winning blow 13 minutes from time. From the few accounts of the supporters who went to Skelmersdale, Mossley didn't play that badly but as crumbs of comfort go (even taking into account our opponents and that it's still August) it's still the tiniest of tiny morsels.

Speaking of Curzon, as I was some paragraphs ago, they're up next for Mossley. We're only two weeks into a new season and they're already 13 points ahead of us. Not bad for a team consisting in the main of last seasons Lilywhites squad; players whom some of our supporters said weren't any good when they left the club in the summer. Unfortunately I'm not going to be at Seel Park to see if the players we have now are (as claimed by some) better than those they replaced so I'm afraid there's going to be an in-depth review of our Bank Holiday game on here. I'm sure there will however be something to write about it, even if it's only "Yay!" or "Oh no!" Not sure what to do if it ends up a draw though.

AFC Fylde 2 - 2 Mossley

2011-08-27T11:40:00.000+01:00

It was from the ridiculous to the almost-but-not-quite sublime for Mossley as they followed up their weak surrender to a slightly better than average Woodley side with a point at one of the title favourites, AFC Fylde.

Not that anyone should really be surprised that we managed to avoid defeat against The Coasters as that's what we've done in every match we've ever played against them. For want of a better term we are their bogey side and despite our less than auspicious start to the season that will continue to be the case until March at the earliest. If you want to be amazed about something to do with this result then its that after managing only one half decent shot on target in the previous 180 minutes of football, the visitors actually held a two goal lead just after the midway point of the game.

What followed the second goal has been described as the Alamo as Fylde laid siege to the Lilywhites net but that's the wrong analogy seeing as the defending side in that particular historical instance lost. This was a score draw so Rourke's Drift is probably a more fitting parallel. Or at least it is if equating important historical events, in which countless lives were lost, to ultimately meaningless sporting contests can in any way ever be described as fitting. I digress though so to get back to the topic in hand I'll point you towards the Mossley report on proceedings and Fylde's take on what happened.

So after being the bogey side we're off to Skelmersdale to face one of the many, many teams who hold a similar hoodoo over us. On our past four visits to Stormy Corner we've conceded a total of 18 goals and received a string of red cards so the chances of this being a dull 0-0 are pretty much slim to non-existent.

Cue the dull, goalless draw.

Mossley 1 - 4 Woodley Sports

2011-08-27T11:35:00.000+01:00

I really don't know where to start or what to do with this blog entry. Actually the start is easy: this was one of the most abject Mossley performances I've seen for a good number of years. It's what to follow it with that's the problem.

On the one hand I don't want to be overly critical, especially after my last posting in which I said it was too early in the season to do such a thing. On the other though it's impossible not to be when you've just witnessed a display that doesn't scream off day but that we have a huge bleeping problems. However, if I was to do the latter and go through all the things that were wrong, or even if I just listed half of the problems that were in evidence over the course of this spell of ninety minutes, I'd be writing practically non-stop for a week. It was that bad. Or it was if you were a Mossley fan. If you were a Woodley supporter then you'd probably just seen your side pick up the easiest three points they'll get all season.

With the employment of some more composed finishing prior to it, Woodley's opener could easily have been the goal that put the seal on the win for the visitors. Of course it's not unusual for a side to have missed enough chances to have won a game before they finally find the back of the net for the first time but I doubt there are many who've done this with only eight minutes of a game having elapsed. The term one-sided was invented for matches like this and how Woodley failed to capitalise on their dominance is beyond me. Actually it isn't; they didn't get the goals they deserved because their forwards were next to useless in front of the net. It meant that for the majority of the match the simple pass-and-go move up the pitch which ripped through Mossley's paper thin resistance, and finished off by Jordan Stepien, was the only thing that separated the two sides. Well that and the the visitors superior level of fitness, their work rate and their decision to field a midfield to name but three of many other things.

Against any other team they'd have probably been made to pay for their wastefulness but happily for them they were facing Mossley. In the seven minutes prior to Stepien's strike and for a significant time after it the only time the Lilywhites entered their opponents half was to chase down the mortar-like passes from the back that formed the majority of their attacking tactics. It took a while but the home side did eventually realise that kicking the ball along the ground to a team mate was slightly more beneficial than lumping it in the general direction of their head. Alas, while it saw them enjoy a bit more possession, it didn't lead to a solitary shot in anger that forced visiting keeper Liam Higginbotham into taking action to preserve his sides lead.

With time in the game running out a shift in formation saw Mossley move to a three man back line. I assume this was to enable more men to move forward in search of a late equaliser but the difference it made to Mossley's attacking fortunes was the square root of zero. Woodley's attacking fortunes however benefited enormously. With even more gaps at the back to exploit they finally started to give the match a more realistic looking scoreline. In the space of five minutes a one goal lead became four and could easily have been six if the post and a terrible finish hadn't come to the home sides rescue.

If the score had stayed 1-0 to Woodley it would have flattered us immensely and I'm sure that in some quarters it would have been seen and spun as a half decent result too. However, while you can pull the wool over the eyes of people who didn't see what happened and have them believe late goals skewed the scoreline or whatever, the reality is that those who saw the game know that even with a 4-0 defeat the home team got off lightly and that against a good side, rather than a half-decent one, it could have been a massacre.

I did say though that I wasn't going to go into full-on critical mode this early into the campaign so instead of picking at the bones (the bare, meat free bones) of this performance just end with this: Three games, one point, one meaningful shot on target in 180 minutes of football at Seel Park, a lack of shape and ideas and the body language of some players already suggests they want to be anywhere else but here. Oh yes, Mossley's season is well underway.

Mossley 1 - 1 Witton Albion

2011-08-20T12:37:00.001+01:00

After four months of waiting (not a second of which, personally speaking, was in eager anticipation) the new football season arrived at Seel Park and it came and went with little in the way of occurence for the match to take up anything more than a fleeting residence in the memories of those who saw it. It was, for want of a better description, an atypical end of season match, only eight months too soon.

That's not to say there weren't some things worthy of commenting on amongst the vast tracts of incident free stretches the game mostly consisted of. Mossley themselves diplayed a high level of energy but much of it was expelled in a wasteful manner as runs went unseen, passes went astray and promising situations came to a sudden halt; problems which meant that the high percentage share of possession the home side enjoyed throughout the match was largely uncapitalised on. Take the first half for example, all the Lilywhites had to show for their efforts was a high and wide shot from Joe Heap, and that only came after the youngster had been put clean through on the Witton goal by a spectacularly ill-advised backpass from the halfway line by an Albion midfielder.

The visitors themselves had hardly set the game alight but they went in at the break with a one goal lead which could possibly have been two if the referee hadn't waved away their appeals for what looked like a nailed-on penalty late on in the half. The one goal they had to their name came in the 25th minute and was the first (and as it turned out, only) shot on target in the opening forty five minutes. For Mossley supporters the manner in which it came had a horrible familiarity to it: a cross to an unmarked player at the far post, a pull back to an equally unattended team mate and shot placed beyond the reach of the goalkeeper. Albion's Danny Andrews applying the finishing touch on this particular occasion.

Without word of a lie, so little of interest was happening on the pitch midway
through the second half that the clouds above Seel Park instigated more
conversation on the terraces around me than the match did.
The second half began with the hope of a more dangerous looking home side on the pitch as substitute Tom Murray stabbed a good cross wide from close range but it soon dissipated as Mossley struggled once more to make a presence felt in the attacking third of the pitch. Not that the visitors were troubling the scoreline either. With the amount of time wasting going on, especially by goalkeeper Matthew Cooper, it looked like Witton had settled for a win by a solitary goal but for one brief moment they sprang into a modicum of life and came close to putting the game beyond Mossley's reach. Lilywhites centre half Peter Band was forced into making a goal line clearance to stop Alex Titchiner from doubling the visitors lead and a minute later the home defence could only watch as Liam Newman hammered a shot off the Mossley crossbar.

It took until the 70th minute for Mossley to manage their first shot on target, another three minutes for them to manage their second and a further nine for them to register an effort that could be termed meaningful. And it's this one which drew them level. A mazy run down the right wing by Kayde Coppin looked to have reached a conclusion as defenders converged around him but the former Flixton player somehow dug out an inch perfect cross that found the head of Harry Noon who in turn found the back of the net. As well as rescuing a point for Mossley it gave the match a scoreline which reflected it better. Not because both sides had cancelled one another out but because neither had done enough to win a game that was hardly going to entice any first time terrace occupiers in to making a return visit.

You can't be critical of a new team playing only their second competitive match (not even I'm that much of a grouchy curmudgeon) so I'm not going to detail the numerous 'facepalm' moments which were repeated throughout the course of the game. They are things which can be eradicated with time and hopefully the ironing out of these kinks will mean I never ever get round to mentioning them on here. I know, at times I'm just too optimistic.

I should probably end on a positive so I'll say that the Lilywhites second half performance was a bit better than the one in the preceding period. It wasn't the massive improvement as some have claimed elsewhere on the internet (unless the first half was even worse than I recall) but being slightly more impressive is better than nothing. The question is will it continue? As ever time will tell, even if history isn't exactly on Mossley's side.

Osset Town 2 - 1 Mossley

2011-08-15T14:05:00.001+01:00

You should always start as you mean to go on which is why coverage of the 2011/12 season on this blog begins with a badly written and uninteresting report on a match I didn't and had no inclination to witness. In other words it is business as usual on Mossley80.

And not only am I starting the new season in the manner in which I finished the last one, so are the team as, just as they did at the end of April, they conceded two goals on their travels and failed to score an equal or greater amount in response. Or to put it more succinctly: they lost. Rather than coming off second best in Lancaster as they did three and a half months ago the new look Lilywhites fell to a defeat at the equally new look (and newly relegated) Osset Town.

This time around though the visitors did manage to score and that goal came courtesy of Scott Hogan, a last minute loan signing brought in from FC Halifax Town to beef up the threat posed by our attack; the lack of which in pre-season being something a number of people have commented on so it's good to see that has been addressed, albeit temporarily while a more permanent solution to the problem is sought.

A fuller report on what happened at Ingfield is available here but various comments made by those who travelled eastwards to Osset suggest that it wasn't a game to whet the appetite for what's to come over the ensuing months. You can't however predict the outcome of a season on the basis of one match so there's no point in being anything other than ambivalent about the possible fortunes of the team for a while yet. Well, at least up until the second game anyway.

Pre-Season 2011/12: Week Three & Four

2011-08-13T11:26:00.001+01:00

As the new Evo-Stik League season is, at the time of writing, only a matter of a few hours away I should probably get round to bringing this blog up to speed with what happened in the summer's four 'pretend' games that haven't previously had a mention. Don't worry! It's not going to be as long as you think.

The first half of the second half of Mossley's pre-season kickabouts turned out to be what we can classify as a good week as the Lilywhites hit a vein of consistency, following up their one goal victory over Cheadle Town by registering similarly margined wins over opposition from both higher and lower levels in the pyramid.

The midweek game saw Mossley continue their impressive run of results against Hyde in pre-season matches and register their first victory at Seel Park against a side managed by Gary Lowe for eight years. By all accounts this was the Lilywhites best performance of the friendlies so far which, meaningless game or not, is heart cockle warming. Only one report on the match exists so head to Mossleyweb to read it.

Three days later Mossley ventured to the land of the pie eaters for their first ever game against North West Counties League Division One team Wigan Robin Park. It needed a late goal 18 minutes from time to give the visitors the win but a win none the less. Again Mossleyweb has details on what transpired while the official Robins' site has photographs.

If that week was good the fourth and final one of Mossley's pre-season campaign wasn't quite so much, getting under way as it did with a strong Mossley side coming off second best in a 1-0 defeat at Abbey Hey, another NWCFL Division One side. From the numerous comments made on various parts of the internet it was a thoroughly deserved win for the team from two leagues below but instead of providing you with a lengthy list of links to where those musings on the game are, I'm just going to point you towards the match report that's here, the photo's that are here and embed the video that the home side produced on the match... here:

The build-up to the new season concluded with a trip to Leicestershire to face Shepshed Dynamo, the only one of our opponents in the friendlies to play at the same level as Mossley. For the second game running (and the fourth time in pre-season) Mossley couldn't find the back of the net but happily for the day-trippers to Butthole Lane neither could Shepshed. If you want more information than that on what happened then you're bang out of luck I'm afraid as nothing more about exists about it on the internet than a scoreline and a team sheet.

So when everything is tallied up it's four wins, four defeats and one draw from the Lilywhites summer fixture list. There have been reasons to be optimistic about the forthcoming campaign and some to make you feel the opposite way. Which of the two ends up having been the correct barometer of what's to come will be known over the course of the next eight and a bit months.

Pre-Season 2011/12: Week Two

2011-07-27T15:47:00.000+01:00

The opening week of Mossley's pre-season campaign was something of a mixed bag results wise (a big defeat, a big win and a narrow defeat to a big team) and it's a theme that carried over to the matches played in the seven days that followed.

For the week's first game our near neighbours from the division above, Ashton United, made the short journey over the hill to compete for the Willow Wood Hospice Cup; a competition that we have a pretty decent record in. Or we used to until this match.

Not having seen the game I can't pretend to offer some kind of insight into why the Lilywhites lost 4-0 at home to a side playing their first game since April. The general consensus of those who did see it though is that we played some nice stuff up until we reached the final third of the pitch. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that old Mossley favourite of struggling to get a sighting of an opponents goal, never mind a shot at one, could be back for it's umpteenth consecutive season. Still, it's nothing that can't be rectified and maybe this is the year which it will be. History dictates however that it probably wouldn't be wise to hold one's breath in anticipation unless a purple/blue skin complexion is the 'in' thing this year.

Could we be in for a promising season though if this perennial Mossley problem is finally solved? Possibly. But looking at it from another angle, the fact we conceded four goals while fielding what on paper appears to be our strongest possible line-up at the moment (especially in terms of the defence) suggests that there may be an entirely different elephant in the room too. There's no point in worrying just yet though as this is the part of the year set aside for ironing out such wrinkles. As the mantra goes, results don't mean a thing in friendlies, it's all about improving fitness and performance. Hopefully we're getting fit.

Should you wish to read better accounts of this game then I'd visit Mossleyweb, SixTameSides and the Ashton United website. Although in which order you choose to do so is entirely up to you.

Four days after relinquishing their grip on the Willow Wood Hospice Cup, Mossley found themselves in the suburbs of Stockport to take on NWCFL Division One side Cheadle Town. And it was back to winning ways too as a late goal from Danny Egan was enough to see the visitors claim a 2-1 victory at the Park Road Stadium. It seems to have been a close game as well judging by the reports on Mossleyweb, the Cheadle Town fanzine and the latter's Twitter feed as the match progressed.

I can't really add anything more to that other than to emit a small 'yay!' at the victory. Not that I'd normally cheer wins in such meaningless matches, it's just that I haven't had chance to do it much since January and I need to get some practice in. You know, just in case come August.

Pre-Season 2011/12: Week One

2011-07-19T15:44:00.000+01:00

Covering last years pre-season games on the very blog you're reading now was a bit of a problem. With choosing to give the matches a very wide berth, finding something to write about them other than to just provide links to the views of those who did was a touch on the difficult side. For this reason I decided that things had to change this year and they have.

No, I haven't done the obvious thing and decided to grace any of the matches with my presence. I've found a much easier (and cheaper) way to do things. Rather than reporting on the friendlies on a game-by-game basis I've decided to do it week-by-week. The content will be the same, i.e. not worth reading, but it will hopefully take up far less of your valuable time to look at before you realise that it really wasn't worth reading.

And now that the preamble is out of the way it's on to the meat of the post or rather the tofu given that what follows is a poor substitute for the real thing you'll find on other sites.

The phoney war got under way with Blue Square North new boys FC Halifax Town making the short trip down the A672 to take on Gareth McClelland's new look Lilywhites side (or last seasons New Mills team if you take in to account the number of signings we've made from them over the course of the summer). When you factor in that the match involved what's basically still a team of strangers facing off against a relatively settled championship winning side from two divisions higher there was really only ever going to be one outcome and so it proved; the visitors making the trip back across the Pennines with a 5-1 victory to show for their afternoon's efforts. The plus for Mossley is that their solitary goal courtesy of Joe Heap was according to reports the best of the six scored during the game.

Ah yes, the reports. They're here and here for the Mossley point of view and here and here for the oppositions take on matters. The last one takes time out to impart some very kind and much appreciated words about this blog and in doing so provides me with a tag line for it when I finally get round to finishing re-jigging it. Current E.T.A. of Mossley80 v3.0? Goodness knows! It has already been 13 months in the making and still not even halfway done. But little do you care about my lethargic attempts to apply the heart paddles to this site. What you want are more links to far better reads than this and the second friendly game will provide these.

After Halifax the next club to take up a presence in the away changing rooms was Oldham Athletic who, in something of a novelty for a Football League team playing a friendly at Seel Park, sent a reasonably strong side containing a fair old smattering of first team players. The reason for them doing so was in honour of Mossley's residence at their current home reaching the 100 year mark. I was going to say playing instead of residence but there are a number of years in the mid-80's and early 90's where they didn't do much of that. Hopefully Oldham will be able to send their first team again in a few years time when we celebrate two decades of the pitch at Seel Park actually being the right size to hold a game of association football on.

Anyway, the match. Far from the being the walkover you may have expected (a professional side playing against a team of amateurs from five levels lower that have barely just met one another) the game finished with the visitors claiming a narrow 1-0 victory. The report in the Oldham Advertiser claims that it was a comfortable victory for the full-timers but that's a conclusion not borne out by the official Oldham website's match updates which suggests that Mossley could have registered a slightly more positive result in the last ten minutes. It's also a summation that's at odds with the report on Mossleyweb and the opinions of supporters who saw the game. But then the Advertiser is from the MEN stable of newspapers and one thing we've learnt in recent years about reports in the MEN involving Mossley (who can forget their hysterically bad Stalin-like airbrushing of events after our win over their then pet favourites FCUB) is that they may not bear a resemblance to what actually happened.

The third and final game of the opening week of friendly matches saw a Macclesfield Town XI make the trip to Seel Park; 'XI' as we all know being football code for a team comprising of players who should probably be revising for exams or finishing off homework instead of kicking a ball around on the edges of the Pennines. Young or experienced players though, and as much as I'd like to avoid using this particular football cliché, you can only beat what's in front of you and Mossley did so by six unanswered goals, and not without a fair old smattering of young people in their own line-up. I believe 'emphatic' is the adjective of choice for a victory like this one which you can read about on the official Mossley site.

So after a less than auspicious start against Halifax Mossley appear to be finding their feet a little which, while good, still means nought at this stage of the year. Friendlies may be necessary but they are ultimately pointless as anything other than a slightly more intensive fitness workout; they are as a guide to an upcoming season what horoscopes are to accurately predicting the future. Except with slightly fewer gullible followers.

Next up on the site: Pre-season friendlies 2011/10 - Week 2. I bet you can wait. Which sadly, going off my current blog work rate, is something you'll almost certainly have to do.

Mossley Youth 2 - 1 New Mills Youth

2011-07-07T19:11:00.000+01:00

The one out and out success that Mossley can rightly point to over the past twelve months of humdrum-ity was the club's first ever youth team. Formed last summer along with a reserve side who weren't too shabby either (probably because it consisted mostly of youth team players), it was the one thing as a supporter that gave you a glimmer of hope for the future.

Watching the first XI put in one turgid performance after another, taking in one of the youth team's matches became something akin to a football palette cleanser. The bitter taste left by the route one style, balsa wood battering ram approach that our senior side's tactics seemed to consist of for spells during our Evo-Stik First Division campaign was washed away by the genuinely rare sight of a team in white shirts playing extremely good football at Seel Park. They had more focus, a seemingly better spirit and... did I mention, they played better football too? I did? Well it is an important point worth repeating.

While they didn't win the league they were playing in - the North West Youth Alliance - a fact that may have ultimately been down to the number of games they were being forced to play every week as the season neared its climax, they did reach three cup finals and won two of them: the Manchester FA Youth Cup and the NWYA Open Cup. A feat which saw the club then embark on an Indiana Jones style hunt for the Lilywhites, some say mythical, trophy cabinet.

What follows is the first of those two final victories (the Manchester FA Youth Cup) which took place back in April at Salford's Moor Lane ground. It's a win that was sadly overshadowed by the big news which broke just before kick-off on the night that Shaun Higgins had vacated the Lilywhites managerial swivel chair and as such the victory probably didn't get the attention it deserved amongst the Mossley supporters. Hopefully though the video will address the balance, even if it only by some imperceptibly minuscule extent.

So, 3 (T-H-R-E-E) whole months after the game took place, here's some video footage of Mossley's goals in the 2-1 win over New Mills along the cup presentation:

Mossley80: it may be slow but it gets there in the end. Eventually. Sometimes.

Lancaster City 2 - 0 Mossley

2011-07-07T09:55:00.001+01:00

Are you familiar with the saying, "better late than never"? Well, if so, I'm about to prove that isn't necessarily the case. Yes dear readers (although I do think I've reached the stage where the pluralisation of that word isn't needed) it's time to finally bring the reporting on Mossley's first team escapades for the 2010/11 to a close.

Reporting probably isn't the best term to use seeing as I don't go to away games any more, so prepare yourself for a bit of waffling before I post a couple of links to the thoughts of people who did travel.

It's actually somewhat fitting that the few words you're looking at now in regards to this game have appeared on the blog over two months late given that the result passed me by for the best part of a week. After posting a link to the live commentary Lancaster University provide on City's home matches on Twitter in the hours before kick-off I completely forgot about the match until I next looked on the club forum four days later. Before you fully form the thought that that's a total exaggeration, let me assure you that it isn't; the complete lack of care I had about the outcome of the match turned into forgetting it took place at all. And judging by some of the comments that have appeared about the game it would seem that forgetting about it is the best thing anybody could do.

Which with a little bit of a clunk segue ways into pointing you in the direction of some actual eyewitness accounts of what transpired at the Giant Axe on that warm Friday afternoon, two and a bit months ago: Smiffy's blog and Mossleyweb. I'd like to link to a Lancaster take on proceedings but none seem to exist. A quick look at the reports on their official website (none since the start of April and only two since mid-March) makes the updates on here look like they're surfing the zeitgeist.

That's it in terms of reporting for this season on the blog, at least for the first XI anyway as there's still one more thing to come. As for what it is I'm not prepared to comment but its arrival will make this two month in the making posting look like up-to-minute reportage.

Curzon Ashton 1 - 0 Mossley

2011-06-29T10:27:00.000+01:00

If for some highly unlikely reason you've been waiting patiently for a report on Mossley's derby game at the Tameside Stadium to appear here then I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed. Not that disappointment is a rare emotion for visitors to this tumbleweed strewn outpost of the internet.

And the reason for this is that I didn't go to the game. I know regular readers will be rolling their eyes and possibly issuing a sarcasm laced "Quelle surprise!" at this not entirely unexpected revelation, but not having seen an away game all season it seemed a shame to break that run with just two matches of the campaign left. So instead of negotiating my way to Ashton Moss via what passes for the Bank Holiday public transport system round these parts, I remained at home with the numerous pennies I would have spent saved for better and more important things. I know that that's not the mark of a 'true fan' but... actually, I don't much care.

Some people did make the effort though to see Gareth McLelland's five match unbeaten start as Lilywhites manager come to an end and you can read one take on proceedings here courtesy of the offical Mossley website.

Next up is the final game of the season at Lancaster City and if I couldn't travel three miles to watch Mossley at Curzon I think you already know what the report for that match will entail.

Mossley 2 - 0 AFC Fylde

2011-05-30T15:16:00.002+01:00

In the month or so that has passed between this match ending and me finally getting around to writing about it, you'd have thought that I'd have been able to come up with something interesting to say about Mossley's final home fixture of the 2010/11 season than what follows. The truth is however that, two brief moments aside, this was a match that defies an entertaining description.

Despite my best intentions not to use a phrase that's regularly heard at this point in the football calendar, I'm afraid I'm going to have to as nothing else suffices in the summing up of this game: it was a typical end of season encounter, short on drama, flowing football and anything else that was noteworthy. At least that was for 77.7% of its running time.

It was only after the introduction of substitute Fabio Abreu in the 70th minute that the game became something more than one to be instantly forgotten the moment the final whistle blew. Less than a minute into his début the England Schools' international delicately placed Mike Fish's through ball past the onrushing Fylde keeper to score with his first touch. Twenty minutes later Abreu played a roll in bringing what has been a less than fantastic season at Seel Park to a close on a highish note. His pass found fellow substitute Sam Hare exploiting a huge gap in the Fylde back line and after taking one touch to get it under control the former Stockport player looped the ball over a stranded goalkeeper to secure the win for the home side.

But why read about the goals when you can watch them instead?

As I've pointed out more than once already in this brief report, it was a less than brilliant game. We've seen plenty of them this year from the terraces but thankfully for once we've ended up being the winning side in one; a rare occurrence that will hopefully become a regular one next season, should of course a similar number of less than brilliant matches take place over those eight and a bit months.

In an ideal world though we'll be winning brilliant matches regularly but as this is Mossley I'm more than happy just to see us win - no matter how high or low the entertainment value is - because it's not something you can become blasé about, especially being a Lilywhites fan.

Leigh Genesis 1 - 3 Mossley

2011-04-25T12:51:00.000+01:00

No wins for two months then two turn up one after the other.

Resisting any urge to make the expected reference to buses I'm instead going to direct you towards a couple of reports that detail the latest chapter of Mossley's incredible turnaround in form since the temporary appointment of Gareth McClelland. The first is the official Lilywhites one while the other is the match as seen from a Leigh perspective.

The victory means it's now four games unbeaten for the Lilywhites since McClelland took charge. While it's not uncommon for teams to undergo an upturn in fortunes when a new manager comes in you have to wonder, especially as a Mossley supporter, what McCLelland is doing so differently to get improved performances out of the same players who, less than a month ago, couldn't make five yard passes to one another without having to have a small group of fluorescent bib wearing boys racing out of the ground to retrieve the ball.

Even if this turnaround in Mossley's form turns out only to be fleeting it has at the very least given us something to be reasonably cheerful about before we head off in to summer and that doesn't happen too often at Seel Park.

Prescot Cables 1 - 5 Mossley

2011-04-23T11:16:00.002+01:00

Mossley's record sixteen game run without a win in 1992/93 that I mentioned in the last report came to an end in a spectacular fashion with the Lilywhites notching up a quite staggering 5-0 victory against Whitley Bay at Seel park. I mean, if you're going to end a barren spell then what better way to do it than by scoring five?

Eighteen long, long, long years on and with 2010/11 version of the Lilywhites edging ever closer to matching the win-free sequence set by their early 90's alumni, they echoed their predecessors by surprising everyone with a five goal dismantling of a hapless set of opponents. Or Prescot Cables as they were known on this day. I'd write more about this momentous event but as a) I wasn't at the game and b) I'm still in a state of shock I shall instead point you in the direction of the official match report.

Hopefully that's where the similarities between the Mossley side of now and the one of almost two decades past will end because that win against Whitley Bay turned out to be the last highpoint for... oh, for the sake of brevity, let's just say years.

Bamber Bridge 2 - 2 Mossley

2011-04-18T23:16:00.000+01:00

A point at Irongate means that Mossley's unbeaten run now stretches to an almost reality defying two games; a simple feat that looked ridiculously unlikely as recently as a fortnight ago. On the downside though a draw means the Lilywhites current sequence of games without a victory now stands just three short of the record set in the 1992/93 season when they went through sixteen matches and three managers without winning.

Back on the upside of things however there's a good reason to be positive as this was a point that not even the most optimistic of Mossley supporters would have expected. It appears to have had some fortuity about it as accounts on the game paint Mossley's goal as having lead a charmed life, especially in the opening period. Still it's nice to be able to say that a draw was lucky rather than thanking good fortune for only losing by two or three goals as we have been doing in recent weeks.

If you wish to peruse a more detailed record of what went on during this game then I have no hesitancy in pointing you towards Bridge's rather splendid Brigcast service which not only provides live match updates but allows those not at the game to feel part of proceedings. So click here to read a minute-by-minute account of the near misses, the goals and the messages of increasing disbelief from Mossley fans as the Lilywhites raced into a two goal lead.

Mossley 0 - 0 Woodley Sports

2011-04-18T10:47:00.000+01:00

Before I got round to writing about this match I was intending to impart with some words on the recent departure of manager Shaun Higgins, his role being filled in caretaker capacity by Gareth McClelland and the youth team's victory in the Manchester FA Youth Cup final. All of which seemed to have happened in the space of six hours on the 7th of this month.

Time and other more important matters however dictate that there's not going to be a lengthy essay on the latest spin of the revolving door that constitutes the entrance to the manager's office at Seel Park. What I will say though is that no matter what the mitigating circumstances may be - financial restrictions, personality clashes, the learning process, etc. - you'd be hard pushed to find a club at a level above park football who would still employ a manager whose picked up only one point in eleven games. A quarter of a season's worth of league fixtures in which the only bright spot was a solitary draw. No manager goes out to deliberately lose games though (at least not until they put me in charge at Manchester United) so commiserations to Mr Higgins on his spell in charge not working out. Thank you but it wasn't meant to be.

The king is dead, long live the new king who turns out to be Gareth McClelland, latterly scout at Chester and someone who has already appeared unnamed on this blog very recently. His instalation in the Mossley managerial ejector seat is only temporary but if he does well over the seven remaining games this season then there's little chance that the job won't be his on a more permanent basis. Well, the Mossley definition of permanent anyway which is between eight to fourteen months.

The new man's only previous experience in a managerial capacity at a non-league club was a few months spent at Woodley Sports last season and it was against his ex-charges that he took up the reins at Seel Park. To add an even keener edge to the game his opposite number in the away dugout was former Mossley manager Chris Willcock, facing his old club for the first time since resigning a year earlier to take up what turned out to be a very short lived spell as assistant manager at Stalybridge Celtic. Coupled with the large number of players in both sides who were facing a team they'd once turned out for, the game had the makings of being a potential humdinger; a blood and guts thriller of a derby with all but a handful of the people on show with points to prove. Potential however eventually gives way to reality and as always it can never match up.

The match was awful. Indescribably so.

Woodley had a shot in the 1st minute, Mossley had one in the 70th and nothing of any note happened on the pitch in-between or after. And boy, do I wish that I was exaggerating for comedic effect.

It was the football equivalent of the test card. Ninety minutes of pure beige. A glance around the terraces at the 80 minute mark (a time during a 0-0 game when tensions should be in the process of being stretched to a highly pitched twanging point) saw people just sat on the terraces chatting, reading the programme, playing with their phones... anything but watch the match and you really couldn't blame them.

It means that the sole positive to come out of the afternoon is that Mossley arrested their losing streak, which as consolations go isn't such a bad one but it would have been nice to have done it in a slightly more interesting fashion. Still, from such tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow and who knows where this match of mind-numbing, string-of-defeat ending banality will eventually lead us? And yes, I'm well aware of how thin that straw is I'm clutching at.

Oh, I almost forgot the Youth Cup final that I mentioned in the opening paragraph. I don't have the time at the moment but there'll be more on that, even if it's only a video, at a later - probably a much, much later - date.

Mossley 1 - 3 Salford City

2011-04-09T13:48:00.001+01:00

We lost. Again.

I'd like to bring you details on the game but... actually, I don't. The truth is that other than the names of the goalscorers there's nothing I could write that wouldn't be a repetition of something that appeared any of the other reports I've done this season: lousy defending, no creativity, an under worked opposition goalkeeper and an overworked chap between our posts were all in evidence again. There's no fresh angle at all to approach this game from in order to produce a few paragraphs that are both informative and worth reading. I've said this before too but it is like Groundhog Day. Except rather than focus on the film's theme of learning from mistakes it's almost as if the Lilywhites have not watched beyond the sequence where Bill Murray's character uses a number of different ways to commit suicide.

To put it simply the football being produced at Seel Park by the home team is enthusiasm sapping stuff. It's crowd sapping stuff too as without the attendance of numerous neutrals, players from other local clubs and a hardy band of Salford followers the gate for this game would have been well, well below the three figure mark. And that more than anything at a club which has retained a reasonable level of support through some incredibly thin times over the last two decades, is the biggest indictment of the current situation. If it has reached a stage where supporter's who've tolerated some spectacularly awful crap down the years have had enough then you have to do something before you lose them forever to Saturday afternoon trips to Tesco.

I don't usually do this for home games but seeing as I don't have the brio to provide you with a narrative of this games events I'll point you in the direction of a few people who do. If you want the official Mossley version then click here or if you fancy an opposing view proceedings you can visit this or that.

As for me, I'm off to lie in a darkened room and think of a reason why I should attend the weekend's game with Woodley other than misplaced sense of loyalty and even more wildly misplaced sense of hope.

Mossley 0 - 1 Chester

2011-04-09T13:46:00.001+01:00

In an attempt to provide a positive spin on this latest instalment of the Mossley's Wile E. Coyote-esque plummet down the Evo-Stik First Division North table, I'm going to quote a posting made by 'Pirate' on the unofficial club forum: "At least it wasn't a total embarrassment." It's a comment which also shows you just how bad things are when simply being just common or garden embarrassing is considered an improvement.

With my tongue so firmly lodged in my cheek that it almost pierced the flesh, I said in the report for the recent home game against Durham that Chester could beat us with five men. It turns out however that reality is closer to some facetious fiction than I imagined as the Cestrians didn't need a full compliment of players to beat us. Okay, it was with one less player rather than six but you couldn't escape the feeling that the visitors could have afforded to lose one or two more bodies before the disparity in numbers started to become a problem for them.

Chester spent the best part of 70 minutes at a numerical disadvantage - the result of an instant red card for a two-footed lunge by Iain Howard - and the amount of times they looked troubled or stretched can be counted on the digits of a hand containing one finger. That solitary occasion of mild worry for the visitors came in the closing stages of the game when substitute Chris Hall had a header from a corner cleared nonchalantly off the line by a defender stood by the post.

That we were still in a position to have grabbed an equaliser was mostly down to goalkeeper Peter Collinge who kept up his late season push for the Player of the Year award by once again being the only barrier between the opposition and a ridiculously heavy defeat. He was beaten once though in the 56th minute, let down by some customary static defending by his team mates after making a good save and you can see it for yourself here:

Chester weren't brilliant but then they didn't have to be. I know some home fans were so nonplussed by their performance, especially before the sending off, that they couldn't believe they were favourites for the league title but to those people I say two things. Firstly, you can't judge a side off one isolated game; it took us at least three to realise that we were this bad and not just experiencing a blip. Secondly, do you not remember how bad we were in the second half of that season five years ago when we won this league?

And while we're on the subject of Chester, compared to the fans of the last club who'd been sent to the lower reaches of the football pyramid that last visited us: a class above. With one exception, maybe.

I've a feeling I may have mentioned this before in a recent report (so apologies if I have) but it's something that does bear worth repeating: the only ray of light poking through the gathering storm clouds with the current Mossley games is that each one is match closer to the welcoming embrace of the end of the season.

At the same time though it's also worryingly one match closer to the foot of the table. While the chances of us finishing in the bottom two are near non-existent barring the sudden discovery that we've fielded half a dozen ineligible players in a few games, the likelihood that we could occupy 21st place in the division come the end of the season is a very real one. We now only sit four points above the current occupiers of that spot, when not so many weeks ago there were eleven points between us.

And that's would be a grim note to end on if I hadn't just thought of one genuine positive that pokes through the ashes of this the game and that's... nope, it's gone. Oh well.

Durham City 3 - 2 Mossley

2011-04-05T13:10:00.000+01:00

A week may have passed, the location may be different but the outcome has a depressingly familiar ring to it.

Seven days after they'd journeyed to Seel Park and picked up a comfortable 2-0 win, Durham claimed another three points off the Lilywhites on their own home soil. Or rather the rubber bits that pass for earth on their artificial playing surface.

It might have been a closer game than the one that transpired the previous weekend (as the Durham match report intimates) but that provides surprisingly little in the way of consolation when it's your eighth defeat in nine games. I'm sure that someone can find a positive spin to put on this wretched run, you'll just have to look elsewhere for it because I'm not very good at writing fantasy fiction.

Mossley 0 - 2 Durham City

2011-04-02T13:03:00.002+01:00

At some point over the course of the next few weeks Chester FC manager Neil Young, sat in his office with a mug containing his hot beverage of choice on the desk in front of him, will turn his attentions to the upcoming game against Mossley.

He’ll find the report sent to him by the club scout who was dispatched to watch the Lilywhites match with Durham and read what it has to say. After he’s finished it he’ll read it again. And again for a third time before reaching for the phone and contacting the scout, at which point the following conversation will take place*:

“Mr Scout. Hello,” says Mr Young. After his salutation is acknowledged by his spy-in-chief, the current incumbent of The Blues’ managerial office swivel chair will continue, “I’ve just been reading the scouting report you’ve sent in regards to Mossley and I was wondering whether it was accurate or not.”

“It is,” comes the reply. “Why do you ask?”

“Well it says that we only need to send five players and that the other members of the squad can be given the weekend off as rest. That’s not right, surely?”

“It’s what I wrote and what I believe. The way Mossley are playing - the lack of any threat upfront, a disorganised midfield, a defence that comes nowhere near close to living up to that particular soubriquet and the absence of any kind of game plan other than to hope that the opposition gets bored and falls asleep at the monotonous use of the long ball or lone charge up the centre of the pitch – five players are all we need to beat them.”

“Don’t you think we should be a little less gung-ho though?. What would you advise if I wanted to show a more cautious approach?” enquires Mr Young.

“Make one of the five a goalkeeper.”

* I do of course use “will take place” in the no-it-won’t-as-it’s-completely-made-up sense of the phrase.

Salford City 2 - 2 Mossley

2011-03-19T13:45:00.000Z

Someone find the phone number of a company that hires out open-top buses because we've got ourselves a point to parade!

Yes, the six game losing streak we've all be enjoying so immensely over the past four weeks has been broken by Salford and Mossley battling to a stalemate at the former's Moor Lane ground.

Although looking at the form of both sides it's surprising that anyone thought there'd be a different outcome. Mossley went into the match with one win in ten matches while Salford had managed a victory in only one of their last nine outings. It's form that's not exactly a recipe for an exciting encounter but whether it confounded expectations or not can be deduced by reading the Mossley and Salford reports on the match.

Whilst you're reading those opinions I'm going to see if I can find a plinth we can attach the point to as we're in need of something to gather dust in the trophy cabinet.

Mossley 1 - 3 Chorley

2011-03-19T13:24:00.001Z

Another day, another game, another defeat and another round of behind-the-scenes stories and incidents that elicit sighs of despair. On the upside though it is another game closer the end of the season and while it’s not heading towards a grand finale, it doesn’t stop it being any less eagerly anticipated by those of us of a Mossley persuasion.

How could it not be looked forward to in the same way that a child relishes Christmas Day when you’ve just watched the side you support fall to a sixth successive defeat? Or when your side is on a run that has seen them take an impressive total of 4 points out of the last 30 available?

The defeat which made up this latest instalment in the Lilywhite’s quest for the lowliest league position possible (who says we have nothing to play for?) didn’t turn out to be too much of a surprise. When you have one side who are pushing for promotion and another who are only pushing patience there’s only ever really going to be one winner.

Without an inform goalkeeper stationed between Mossley’s posts it’s likely that this game would have done been done and dusted as a contest by the time the opening period had reached its midway point. For all their possession and shots though Chorley only (only!) had two goals to show for their early match endeavours: a 7th minute shot from Tom Ince, which sprung from the season’s umpteenth ill-advised pass across the back four by a defender, and a nice chipped effort from Steve Foster quarter of an hour later.

Mossley’s solitary response during this time came when they tried something other than kicking the ball both high and long to the head of lone forward Chris Hall. By getting the ball out wide for once and attacking down the wing they stretched the Chorley backline and Hall came within a matter of centimetres of connecting with Mike Oates’s left wing cross. This glimmer of an opening should have provided a hint as to how to drag ourselves back into the match but it was an approach never tried again (at least not until it was far too late) and we were soon back to an approach that mostly consisted of firing balls at Hall’s head from 50 yards.

I say mostly because the second time they tried something different in the match it lead to the arrears being halved. Chris Rowney set off on a run towards goal from his own half and encountered no real resistance until keeper Aaron Grundy upended him in the Chorley penalty area. It was a moment that led to an enormous amount of invective being hurled towards the referee as he awarded the penalty and nothing else in the way of punishment.

Whilst the general consensus seemed to be that a dismissal was merited, I can sort of understand why the referee chose not show the goalkeeper a red card as Rowney wasn’t exactly clean through on goal. He had two defenders alongside him and was running parallel to the goal when the ‘tackle’ occurred. It was a deliberate foul though: the keeper completely missed the ball in his attempt to claim it and having done so shaped his body so that he took the Mossley player out of the game. At the very least it was a yellow card but the referee didn’t even believe that a lecture to Grundy about how lucky a keeper he’d been was warranted.

It wasn’t to be the officials last moment in the spotlight and, for me at least, not the biggest clanger he made on the day. What was came later on in the half after Mossley had successfully defended a Chorley corner. As play was making its way up the right side of the pitch, a visiting players who wasn’t rushing to get back into position appeared to swing an arm into the face of Peter Collinge.

I fully appreciate that the referee won’t have seen what happened as he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head but the assistant referee did and began to wave his flag to attract his colleague’s attention. After some considerable time and plenty of prompting from the Mossley fans and players the referee acknowledged his assistant, saw Collinge spark out on the floor and gave the home side a free-kick.

I don’t think he knew what he was giving a free-kick for but the linesman did and he continued to wave his flag around like a man trying rid a picnic of midges and make gestures that he wanted to speak to the referee. The man-in-the-middle didn’t want to know though and simply ignored the signals from the touchline. If he’d actually bothered to go across and find out what had got his assistant so agitated I’m reasonably certain that Chorley would have had to play out the match with only ten men.

The sad thing is that even if they had been reduced in numbers I don’t think the result would have been any different, apart from it maybe not being as comfortable a victory as it was. Actually, scratch that thought: it probably would have been as comfortable as it turned out.

Anyhoo, back to the penalty.

After Matty Kay had converted it there was a hope that the sense of injustice (whether rightly or wrongly) filling the air about Grundy’s non-dismissal would put some fire in Mossley’s bellies. It didn’t. Between the spot-kick and the last 10 minutes when the decision to finally play someone up alongside Chris Hall gave the attacks a bit more purpose, the Lilywhites created nothing apart from a long range effort early in the second half by Kay that hit the crossbar. In that period of time Chorley had added another goal through John Cunliffe and were left to curse Collinge’s good form for them not having another two or three to their name.

The cherry on top of the sixth successive defeat cake was the story which broke during the second half about three Mossley players fighting amongst themselves in the tunnel during the interval. And that wasn’t the only tale – okay, “rumour” – doing the rounds on the day, none of which give the impression of everything being rosy. But then this is Mossley and tales of turmoil, whether real or apocryphal, have become such an intrinsic part of the clubs DNA over the past two decades that the time you really have to start worrying is when stories such as this don’t circulate. Besides, it gives supporters something to discuss on the terraces because there’s very little happening on the pitch for them to talk about.

Despite the negativity I’m sure we will another game soon, even if it’s only because the law of averages dictates it rather than the possibility of the team entering a brief spell of good form.

Garforth Town 2 - 1 Mossley

2011-03-19T13:15:00.000Z

And it’s a fifth successive defeat for the Lilywhites. Who says we aren’t consistent?

If you want to know what happened at the Genix Healthcare Stadium on this particular evening then you have two options, or three if you’ve discovered a way to travel back in time. The first is to visit Mossleyweb and read the official Mossley version of things while, secondly, a Garforth Town fan site gives an alternative view of proceedings.

According to both reports Mossley played a lot better when red cards reduced them to 9 men so keep your fingers crossed for a couple of early dismissals against Chorley in the next match to give us a fighting chance. Or better yet let’s just start the match two men short. There’s a fairly obvious punch line to that last sentence I’m sure you’ve already supplied yourself so I won’t insult your intelligence by repeating it here.

Mossley 1 - 2 Prescot Cables

2011-03-12T11:54:00.000Z

There’s a very famous proverb that says it’s always darkest before the dawn; that things always seem to be at their worst right at the point just before they get better. If this particular adage is indeed true then we’re in for quite a spectacular sunrise at Mossley because at the moment it is positively pitch black.

If it wasn’t already bad enough in recent weeks thanks to the reversals against Leigh and Cammel Laird, the tenebrous atmosphere that has settled over Seel Park was added to by this not-as-surprised-I-should-be defeat to Prescot Cables, making it an unholy trinity of three successive defeats to sides from the lower echelons of the Evo-Stik First Division; an area of the league Mossley will soon becoming accustomed to once more should they not rediscover even the most infinitesimal amount of form any time soon.

Despite going down at home to a team who were a) lying third from bottom of the table before the game and b) quite possibly the worst visiting side to have graced Seel Park this season, there are some who’ll raise an argument – albeit not one that many supporters would be prepared to back up – that this was an improved performance because we had the lion’s share of possession and it’s true: we did. The reason we did though is because after Prescot took an 11th minute lead they treated the ball like it was a hand grenade with the pin missing.

Never before have I seen whole a team so unwilling to keep hold of the ball. Every time they took possession it was launched anywhere at the first available opportunity. It was like those game periods at school when pupils who hated football were forced to take part in a match and on the occasions they couldn’t runaway from the ball, would close their eyes and wildly swing a leg at it.

Prescot’s panicky reaction naturally meant that Mossley got to see more of that little sphere of synthetic material encased air - or the ball - than they have done in a game for quite a while. Yet in spite of this the number of chances the Lilywhites created was in no way proportional to it. Part of the reason why is due to the number of bodies the visitors had loaded their defence with in an effort to hang to the lead but mostly it was down to Mossley showing the same amount of creativity that a lumpfish with a sprained fin would have if it had been tasked with unlocking the Cables back line.

The way the home side were lined-up wasn’t exactly aiding matters. That’s not say that the 4-5-1 formation they employed for a sizeable proportion of the game was to blame as isn’t necessarily a negative formation. If the lone striker is well supported from both the flanks and the midfield it can be a formidable set-up for a defending team to have to counter. Against Prescot however the problem was that lone striker was not well supported. The use of the phrase ‘ploughing a lone furrow’ couldn’t be more apt to describe Chris Hall’s efforts on the night.

Outside of the now all-to-familiar long, long pass his supply line was next to non-existent. Like the last match the five players strung across the midfield provided little in the way of width. You knew that if you began to count every time the ball made its way to a wide position that by the time you got to 3 it would be being played or carried back towards the crowded middle again. Then again, in employing a centre half/sometime right back as a right sided midfielder and two right footed players on the left side, there was hardly going to be much chance of them haring towards the corners and pinging over a cross.

Cables keeper Michael Langley didn’t have to make a save until midway through the second half when he had to quickly back peddle to tip a looping effort from Mike Oates over the bar. He then made a superb point blank stop to deny Matty Kay not long after but there was little he could do to stop Mossley finally pulling level in the 77th minute when a shot from distance by right back Ryan Barrow took a slight deflection that left him wrong footed.

It should have been the moment that saw Mossley find a higher gear but instead it was the visitors who responded. After spending the majority of the game looking like panic crazed amateurs they suddenly began to pass the ball around with an unerring degree of accuracy that split the Lilywhites wide open. Collinge did well to prevent Prescot’s second shot of the match from entering the net with a scrambled save on the goal line but he was powerless to stop their third effort as Joe Gibiliru Jr , son of the former ex-Mossley player of the same name, waltzed through the at sixes and sevens defence to pick up a loose ball and score. There’s a question to be asked as to why Prescot didn’t play the whole match like this but from a Mossley perspective I’m rather thankful they didn’t or else this result might have been even more depressing than it actually was.

To no one’s real surprise Mossley couldn’t respond to going behind for a second time in the match and the game petered out to growing acrimony for the disgruntled still left inhabiting the terraces at the final whistle. On this evidence I think it’s going to be a good while yet before the sun starts peeking over the horizon and dissipates the gloom enveloping us at the moment.

Mossley 1 - 2 Cammell Laird

2011-03-07T18:42:00.000Z

It’s very, very rare that you get to experience a new feeling when you get to my age but I was introduced to one in the build-up to this match; one which has passed me by in all my years making the regular trip to Seel Park: positivity.

I wasn’t merely hopeful that we were going to see a improved performance over our previous outing, I was as confident as it’s possible to be that we’d not only see a display from the Lilywhites that was a 100 times better than what we saw against Leigh but that we’d win too. Or at the very least manage a draw.

I know that such an optimistic outlook from me of all people will probably come as a surprise to most of you (it did to me!) but I can’t explain why I thought we’d see an improvement. And I think we would have too if someone hadn’t uttered that immortal phrase before kick-off; the one which makes Fate raise its eyebrow and smirk, as if to say “you really want to tempt me, eh?”

Ten minutes before the match was due to start the following words in the following order floated across the Seel Park terraces: “It can’t be as bad as the last match.” Now I’m not a superstitious person but even I at times think there may be something to the term ‘jinxing things’. But then I come to my senses and realise that it’s not some mystical unseen force that’s responsible for Mossley playing badly, it’s Mossley themselves.

And badly is what they played on this very afternoon. I don’t wish to take anything away from Cammell Laird as they did what they had to do very well but their task was made significantly easier by another Mossley display which left the majority of spectators perplexed and peeved.

The only visible silver lining on the afternoon.
One of the most annoying things about the game from a Lilywhites perspective is that, unlike the Leigh match, it didn’t start too badly. It must be said that it wasn’t brilliant either but Mossley just about edged the cagey opening in terms of possession and looked half decent while doing so.

If this ‘golden’ period of stringing three passes together a couple of times had lasted more than 15 minutes we might even have eventually managed to get close enough to our opponents goal to have had a shot (I know – I’m such a dreamer) but it didn’t. Instead it came to a premature end with an unnecessary and errant pass that allowed the visitors a free shot on goal and while it didn’t go in it was the jolt that started to swing the match in Lairds favour.

The uphill task began with a free kick in the 22nd minute. The angle it was at made an attempt at goal look impossible and wasteful but Paul Wheeler curled an incredibly impressive shot round the wall. Peter Collinge did very well to block it but he was unable to prevent Chris Adamson from prodding the loose ball into the net. It would have been nice if someone from the home side other than the prone goalkeeper had reacted to this situation besides the visiting number 5 but it appears you can’t have everything. Not long after Wheeler hit the foot of the post again with another free-kick and the number of chances the visitors were both creating and wasting began to grow at a disturbingly alarming rate.

Mossley weren’t exactly helping their cause by reverting back to the keep sending it down the middle approach which had proved so 'successful' against Leigh four days earlier. It was a decision made all the more inexplicable by the fact that for the first time in a while they had Steve Settle - a bona fide winger - on the pitch and someone who’d made inroads into Lairds back line on the few occasions he’d been presented with the ball in the opening quarter of an hour.

Another goal for the visitors looked only a matter of time in coming and that time was the 34th minute. Its genesis came when Lairds keeper Phil Palethorpe brought a halt to a Mossley attack (a word I use in its loosest, most wishy-washiest sense of the term) by clearing the ball both high and long down the pitch. As it arced its way through the air, over the halfway and deep into the Lilywhites half not one person in a white shirt thought that it might be an idea to perhaps go and get it. Maybe they assumed that as it was heading towards where the left back should be that he would have dealt with it.

Alas the left back wasn’t there as thanks to the unique way we were set out to play he was still our most advanced player due to being required to act as a left sided midfielder and attacker on top of his duties as a defender.

One player did finally decide to go and collect the ball and rather sadly from a Mossley perspective, primarily because he doesn’t play for them, it was Jordan Evason. As you’d expect from a footballer given all the time in the world by the people who were supposed to be tackling him he was able to re-distribute the ball with some precision, in this case straight into the path of Aaron Bowen who with one touch hammered the ball past Collinge from close range. A moment soundtracked by the faint thwack of just under a 100 faces being put into just under a 100 palms.

The immediate aftermath of the goal saw captain Graham Kay substituted, a curious decision given that he was performing no worse than his fellow defenders but a decision that probably had a deeper undercurrent; a thought given extra credence by the exchange of shirt and words that took place while the player and manager were momentarily within the vicinity of one another.

The official report says that the introduction of Aaron Chalmers in his place steadied the ship but it didn’t. Laird might not have scored another goal but that was down to some truly hopeless finishing and incredible goalkeeping rather than any of the holes being filled in the all too porous home defence. If their strikers had been on form – and Collinge off his – then matters could have got a whole lot more embarrassing for the Lilywhites than they already were.

As well as the substitution the second goal also instigated another round of swapping players between positions. Settle, an attacking right winger, was moved to left back while Cavell Coo was moved from that position to fill Settle’s vacated role. I’m sure there was some logic behind the change but what it was seemed to be lost on most people judging by the number of slowly shaking heads on the terraces.

It was all change again after the break as Mossley re-took to the pitch with a 3-5-2 formation. Quite remarkably for such a line-up there was no width to the Lilywhites play at all with Settle becoming an increasingly marginalised figure out by the touchline until he was replaced by Chris Hall on the hour mark.

The alterations to both the formation and personnel had no impact in improving Mossley’s chances and it was the visitors who continued to create and miss chances. However, the more opportunities Cammell Laird spurned the more I began to think - with the strange football logic a lot of supporters have - that Mossley were playing bad enough to get something out of the game and that at least of part of my pre-game prediction would come true. I’ve seen it happen before and I was almost right.

There was 7 minutes left when Mossley scored a goal out of nothing and in a manner that if it had taken place at the top level of the game would have kept Sky Sports News going for days. An all too rare attempt at trying something other than hitting the ball as hard as possible at the forwards saw a through pass finally open the Lairds defence. Kristian Dennis timed his run to perfection and struck the ball past Palethorpe to give Mossley a lifeline they didn’t really deserve.

That doesn’t sound controversial but the goal was initially ruled out by the linesman because Michael Fish was stood in an offside position as the ball was played through. After a prolonged discussion with the referee the assistant conceded that Fish wasn’t interfering with play and withdrew his objection to the goal. What raises the controversy up to a level that would get the media into a frenzied state if it had happened at The Emirates or that place in Trafford is that the referee had acknowledged his assistant’s original decision with the whistle before Kristian Dennis took his shot: the goal was scored when play had been stopped by the official. In the grand scheme of things justice was done in the end in awarding Mossley what was a perfectly legitimate goal but it was one heck of a cock-up on an officiating level.

In the end it turned out to be a cruel goal as it gave a glimmer of hope when there truly was none: a rubber bone thrown to a starving dog. It didn’t lead to an all-out attack in search of an equaliser or even a tiny of spell of pressure which produced something that could be considered a half chance. It merely served to give the score line a more flattering look and make it seem like it was closer than it was.

After choosing the pages of the Oldham Evening Chronicle to lay the blame for the Leigh Genesis defeat firmly at the feet of the players he’d picked, rather than take his share of the blame too for the equally responsible formation and tactics he’d chosen, Mossley’s manager didn’t get quite the reaction he was probably expecting in this game. Everyone else was not quite so surprised (such interviews given to the local media at this level rarely ever have the kind of positive effect you desire) but it was something we can probably put down to being part of the learning curve for a new manager.

What can’t be dismissed quite so easily as part of the learning process though are the tactics, formation and team selections. The obsession with keeping play confined to a narrow corridor down the centre of the pitch has gone from puzzling to infuriating in a very short space of time. There’s so little variation it’s almost as if we’re taking the same approach to tactics as Field Marshal Haig had in Blackadder Goes Forth: “Doing precisely what we have done eighteen times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time.”

The job swap scheme in regards to players being used in unfamiliar positions for short periods of time continues to baffle but not as much as the decision to drop most people’s man of the match for the Leigh game (and one of the few players to emerge from the debacle with any credit at all), Aaron Chalmers, to the bench. Other changes were made to the side but the faces which came in were the ones who went out the last time the side needed freshening up after a poor defeat.

It begs the question as to the point of having a reserve side when there’s no movement between it and the first team, barring the odd exception when Joe Heap gets a few minutes every other month. What incentive is there for the second eleven (who are currently joint top of their division) if they can’t even get a sniff of first team action when the seniors are struggling as badly as they are?

To an outsider it must seem strange to see someone being so frustrated and annoyed at a team that currently sits at a spot no lower than 12th in the league table but compared to some of my fellow supporters I’m positively mellow about the whole thing. The problem is that all we can see at the moment is regression and not progression. We began the season badly yet following a brief spell in December and early January when we had some success while playing good football, it’s to those grim days of August and September we’ve returned to once more. It’s almost as if nothing has been learnt over the past 6 months.

Football being what it is though the next match could see Mossley once produce the impressive style of football we know they're fully capable of having witnessed it 3 months ago. On the other hand, as I mentioned earlier, you can't rule their propensity at times for scraping away at the bottom of the barrel. All I know is that I'll be there to see what happens and bring you a much, much, much shorter report on it. Promise.

Mossley 0 - 2 Leigh Genesis

2011-03-01T10:37:00.001Z

During a quiet period at work (we have rather a lot of them at the moment) a conversation about football turned into how we’d describe the teams we support to someone who wasn’t particularly au fait with the sport or additionally in my case, someone for whom the non-league aspect of the game is an unknown quantity.

After giving it plenty of thought (like I said, time for such things is very much in abundance at work these days) I realised that there wasn’t a suitable frame of reference for Mossley in not only football but other sports as well. It was only much later that it dawned on me that the perfect comparison was not another team - football or otherwise - but a figure from literature.

What best embodies Mossley AFC to the layman more than anything else is a small piece of 19th Century prose by Henry Longfellow. We are his little girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead because when we are good we are very good indeed, but when we are bad we are horrid.

And horrid is what we were against Leigh.

There would be some debate amongst Mossley supporters as to which was the last truly dreadful performance by the men in white shirts. Some would argue that it was the 5-0 defeat at Clitheroe in August, others would point to the slightly more recent game against Darlington and a few may even go back a season or two. After this game though I think all disagreements will be put aside and a unanimous decision made on this being the latest absolute stinker of a performance from the Lilywhites.

It wasn’t a case of things starting well before gradually getting worse or even starting badly and deteriorating from there. From the first whistle to the last Mossley never rose above a level that was shambolic and inept; a performance during which even simply being mediocre was an aspiration beyond anything we could ever hope of achieving.

Straight from the outset it looked like they thought they only had to turn up to beat their bottom of the table opponents and not even going behind to a fifth minute goal from ex-Lilywhite Marvin McDonald (the latest in a long line of players who couldn’t hit the proverbial cow’s bum with a banjo while wearing a white shirt to score on their return in another club’s colours) could instil any urgency into the home side.

After it took some speedy backtracking by Peter Collinge to stop a wildly mis-hit 25 yard back pass doubling Leigh’s lead a few minutes later, the Mossley manager made the first of what turned out to be many positional changes on the night. Changes that the idiom ‘like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’ could have been invented for and ones which added to the ramshackle nature of the Lilywhites evening.

To give you an idea of how ridiculous the switching around got, the team line up after 70 minutes was as follows: at right back we had a player who began the match at centre half. The person he’d replaced was now playing left back after a brief spell in his favoured position in the centre of the defence. The third person to fill that gap in the back line was a central midfielder who in turn had his role in the middle of the park taken up by the starting left back. And to round things off a substitution saw an attacking role on the left wing filled by a right back.

I hope you managed to follow that but if you didn’t and it doesn’t make any sense then don’t worry: you’re not alone as there were quite a few people at the match who couldn’t figure out what was going on either. And not just on the terraces.

The ‘who’s doing what?’ conundrum wasn’t being helped as well by the decision to start the game with four central midfielders, all of whom seemed to be desperately trying to occupy the same small area in the middle of the pitch, unsure of the role they’d been asked to fulfil judging by the arguments about who should be where.

The lack of width in midfield meant that once again the onus was on the full backs to push forward and provide Mossley with an attacking option that wasn’t a direct ball to two forwards who, like the midfield, were making identical runs into identical positions. It’s not a role that full backs with no cover in a flat back four should be asked to play but Aaron Chalmers, much like Ben Richardson did to increasingly visible levels of frustration before his departure to Woodley, did his best to give Mossley an attacking edge and was one of only two players (Collinge being the other) to come out of the debacle with any credit, even after taking into account that it was his unforced error that led to the visitors opener.

It would be unfair to say that the Lilywhites didn’t create anything in terms of goal scoring opportunities but what they did fashion could hardly be classed as good or even half chances. There was a goalmouth scramble midway through the first half and a couple of shots from distance but nothing that caused a defence with the second worst record in the division any real trouble.

Conversely the attack with the worst record in the division by some considerable distance (a 0.77 goals per game average) were posing a constant threat and Mossley could count themselves fortunate that it took until the 79th minute for the game to be over as a contest, even if it effectively never was one. A mere four passes, starting from the edge of Leigh box, opened up what passed for Mossley’s defence and on this occasion they couldn’t rely on Collinge sparing their blushes; Connor Millington netting for the visitors and sending a sizeable chunk of the home crowd heading for the exit, a decision which many will wish they made much earlier.

I’ve no doubt that at this point anyone who’s reading this and never saw the game is probably thinking that I’m going overboard as to how bad things were but the sad truth is that I’m not. Actually I'm not entirely sure if I've really managed to convey just how poor it was from a Mossley perspective or even mentioned half of the other problems which conspired to make the night memorable for all the wrong reasons. If you don’t believe we were that bad I recommend check out the opinions of other Mossley supporters here and here (if you’re a member of the forum). Even the official match report which usually gives proceedings a rosy hue is pretty forthright in its condemnation of Mossley’s performance.

It was one of those games that you hope is a one off but my fear, and I know it’s shared by others, is that it isn’t. The problems which plagued us in this match (on pitch arguing, poor body language, strange team selections and formations) have been ones that have caused us trouble to varying degrees in other games and show no sign of being addressed.

The best we can wish for is that this game was not one suffered in vain and that it acts as the catalyst for some improvement because at the moment we don’t seem to be heading anywhere other than down. However if it’s an example of what we can expect over the remaining 16 games of the season then it’s going to get very lonely on the terraces come April.

Skelmersdale United 4 - 0 Mossley

2011-02-24T12:05:00.000Z

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”

Benjamin Franklin (1789)

“And heavy defeats at Skelmersdale United”

Addendum by Mossley supporters (2009 - ?)

For the fourth season running Mossley returned home from the Lancashire new town with nothing to show for their troubles other than a defeat and a significant reduction in their goal difference. By all accounts (by which I mean those here and here) we didn't play too badly but that doesn't really offer much comfort when you've had four unanswered goals put past you.

To be truthful I (and I expect a good number of my fellow Mossley supporters) didn't really think that there'd be any other outcome to this match than the total in our league table's loss column rising by one. Ever since Skelmersdale switched to their new home at Stormy Corner we've struggled to keep our encounters with them there to anything even approaching a narrow defeat. Yet another location to add to the long list of bogey grounds Mossley currently have; a list that's getting so big that it probably won't be too long before Seel Park gets put on it as well... only joking! That's not likely to happen is it?

Is it? (laughs nervously)

Mossley 3 - 0 Wakefield

2011-02-22T14:59:00.000Z

If there’s one fixture in a season that I look forward to with the same anticipation a turkey has for the Christmas decorations going up it’s this one.

The reason as to why Wakefield’s annual visit to Seel Park fills me with dread is very straight forward: the matches are never anything other than dire. Even on the occasions when the games have managed to rouse the spectators from their tedium induced slumber with a goal or two, the uplifting effect has been only momentary and the terraces quickly enveloped once more by a wave of unqualified boredom.

By this point of the report, after describing the awfulness of the previous corresponding meetings, you’re probably expecting a ‘but’ or an ‘however’ to be followed by a sentence describing how this match confounded expectations and was a barnstormer of an hour and a half of football. If you are expecting it then I’m afraid you’re going to be very disappointed because while it did briefly rise to a level that could be termed entertaining, it was for the most part another dog of a game.

Its nadir was a first half that felt like it went on for 50 years longer than the 45 minutes it did. Watching the ball ping from one box to the other without bouncing at any of the points inbetween was a real chore to watch. The visitors employment of long ball tactics was understandable considering that no-one in their starting XI appeared to be of a height that didn’t begin with at least a 6. Why Mossley chose to use that exact same plan of attack though with a forward line consisting of two players that would have had trouble getting past the ‘You have to be as tall me to go on this ride’ sign at Alton Towers, let alone winning the ball in the air against Wakefield’s altitudinous defence, is a question we would have debated on the side lines if it wasn’t for the fact we were on the verge of falling asleep.

What made the home side’s strategy all the more peculiar was that the one bit of decent passing football they did produce in the opening period resulted in them taking the lead. Just after the midway point of the half Mike Oates latched onto Kristian Dennis’s prodded through ball following some patient build-up play and slipped a shot under Bear’s keeper Jan Zolna.

At the other end of the field the succession of balls sent flying into the box from all areas of the pitch were reaping no dividend for the visitors, mainly due in part to the most solid display I’ve seen by a Mossley defence for a fair old while. Every corner, free-kick, long throw or hopeful punt was dealt with in a sensible fashion; no attempted Cryuff turns, back heels or intricate passes of the kind we’ve seen (and winced at) in recent times – just a simple safety first approach that will hopefully now become the norm.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t a moment or two that momentarily raised the hair on the necks of Liliywhites supporters. An early corner forced Peter Collinge into making an extremely good reactionary stop and minutes before the interval Dean Kyriacu should have levelled the game but he a fired a shot so wide of the target from a good opening that even he had to let out a small laugh of incredulity.

That wayward effort from Kyriacu also turned out to be Wakefield’s last chance of the match. Even though the already meagre returns from their aerial bombardment policy were diminishing exponentially the longer the match wore on, they flogged their dead horse of a tactic till the 68th minute when they finally turned to Plan B. Plan B however turned out to be exactly the same as Plan A but with someone even ridiculously bigger playing upfront - someone so tall that he must have discovered 10 seconds before the rest of us that it was starting to rain. His impact on the game wasn’t enough to even be considered negligible and Oates’s first half strike increasingly looked like being enough to win the game.

You can never be too sure though and thankfully Mossley managed a couple more to put the result beyond any doubt. To be honest the two further goals were no less than Mossley deserved for their second half display as unlike their opponents they left the long ball tactic in the dressing room at the break and spent the second period of forty five minutes trying to play some attractive football. Chances soon began to flow and Zolna finally had to do more than occasionally mop up the odd stray ball that his centre halves had missed in the air.

The second goal when it did arrive did so from the penalty spot. Chris Hall was upended by a combination of Zolna and Wes Milnes (the one time in the match the Wakefield keeper didn’t complain about a refereeing decision) and Matty Kay converted the kick by dispatching it down the centre of the net.

Chances continued to come and go for the Lilywhites but it wasn’t until the last minute that they completed the night’s scoring. Once again it was Matty Kay who found the back of the net, this time via the underside of the bar after sprinting clear of Wakefield’s increasingly bedraggled offside trap.

It might not have been enough to make me look forward to Wakefield’s visit next season but Mossley’s second half performance was encouraging in terms of what’s left of this campaign. At least that is if we play football to our strengths and not in a manner that highlights our shortcomings, no pun intended.

As I’ve said before I’m not someone with an ingrained hatred of the long ball game. It can be extremely effective at times if you have the right tools and with our only real height being in defence, we don’t. What we do have are some incredibly skilful and inventive players and these talents we should be utilising. Surely it’s better to try and open something with the precision of a surgical scalpel than attempting to bludgeon it apart with an orthopedic hammer made of bubble wrap?

Then again this is Mossley and doing the obvious thing is not something we’re exactly known for.

I do have footage of the goals lying around on a memory card somewhere and hopefully they’ll be online at some point within the next week or so. The operative word in that last sentence being hopefully.

Witton Albion 2 - 0 Mossley

2011-02-21T11:42:00.000Z

The postponement of intervening games at Lancaster City and Leigh Genesis turned the home and away league meetings with Witton Albion into back-to-back fixtures for the Lilywhites and by all accounts that was the most interesting thing about Mossley’s venture to Wincham Park.

Yes, two goals were scored by the home side but the comments (or the lack of them in Mossley’s case) on club message boards and some of the opinions I’ve heard from supporters who went suggest that this was the first ‘end of season’ encounter of the campaign. If true it’s a trifle worrying in Mossley’s case given that they still have 17 games left to play before the actual end of the season is reached. Coupled with a spot in the play-offs not being beyond the realm of possibility (even if it’s a possibility where the use of the word faint to describe it would be an underexaggeration) it isn’t as though there’s nothing left to play for, even if it is only a top ten finish.

One game poor game however isn’t going to make too huge a dent in any promotion aspirations we may have left. It’s only when they turn into a string of them that you abandon all hope of entertainment and begin to daydream about how things will surely be better next season.

Idly speculating about likelihood of watching mid-table snoreathons at some point in the near future isn’t talking about this match though so if you want to know more (and it’s possible there maybe someone out there who does) then click here and for the official views from the Mossley and Witton camps respectively.

Maybe things will be better in the next match against... (checks fixtures) Wakefield. Ah. Not to worry, there's always the game after that.

Mossley 3 - 3 Witton Albion

2011-02-15T18:25:00.000Z

One thing you've got to love about Mossley (because if you didn't as a supporter it’s likely you’d shed half of the fluid in your body through your tear ducts) is the sheer predictability of their unpredictableness. No matter what form you may think they're in they'll always endeavour to confound your expectations by being a) good, b) bad, c) good and bad or by d) staggering wildly between the two extremes like a drunk trying to walk in a straight line during a hurricane.

This game was one of those occasions where the latter happened. Ninety minutes during which the Jekyll and Hyde sides to the Lilywhites nature played peekaboo with one another. And unlike the film versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel in which the metamorphosis between the two personalities is a notable process, Mossley’s transition was faster than a thought.

The first flip occurred immediately after the home side had capped an opening 21 minutes containing some staggeringly good football with a goal that was equal in quality. Breaking quickly from a poorly worked free kick conceded deep in their own half, Mossley moved up the pitch by spreading the ball from one wing to the other until it reached the feet of Kristian Dennis. Following a touch to control the pass and one to beat his marker he guided the ball almost effortlessly into the bottom left hand corner of the net.

The lead was no less than the home team deserved but they weren’t having it entirely all their own way as Albion had hit the woodwork themselves and flashed a shot narrowly wide on their rare ventures forward; attacks which quickly grew in number following the opening goal thanks to Mossley inexplicably changing the way they were playing. Gone was the expansive passing game that had seen them tear through their opponents with ease and in its place was the sadly not unfamiliar tactic of hoofing the ball up the pitch at every available opportunity; a change last seen when the Lilywhites were three up and coasting against Clitheroe and one which ultimately left us in that match hanging on to a narrow victory by some well bitten fingernails.

Considering the intense pressure they were under it was a minor miracle that the Lilywhites made it to the interval with their one goal lead intact. And having reached the break there was hope that the short rest period would give Mossley the chance to tackle some of the problems that Albion were exploiting. Like the tackling. Or to be more exact, the lack of it.

Sadly this and other issues such as the narrow midfield, Ben Richardson receiving no assistance in trying to deal with two opponents constantly bearing down on him and the resorting to tactics straight out of a Charles Hughes coaching manual (to name but three) went unaddressed and with all the inevitability of death, taxes and lousy Saturday night TV schedules Mossley’s resistance crumbled not once, but twice within the space of three second half minutes. Alex Titchiner and Ian Kerney netting a slightly scrappy goal apiece to edge their team ahead.

After Witton had gone narrowly close to adding a third – a spectacular save from Peter Collinge having prevented them from doing so – Mossley‘s character changed again. Passes returned to being from foot-to-foot instead of from foot-to-an-area-of-space-between-six-to-fifteen-feet-above-everybody’s-heads and the reward was near instantaneous. A through ball caught the Albion defence square and Kristian Dennis fired past the keeper from the edge of the area for both his and Mossley’s second of the night.

The visitor’s response was to crumble. Whether it was through tired legs or the panic Mossley were now creating with their passing and movement, Albion began to drop deeper and deeper until it reached a point where the goalkeeper appeared to be their furthest player forward. Therefore it didn’t come as much of a surprise when Mossley retook the lead. As with the preceding two it was scored by Dennis; the striker completing his hat-trick with a turn and shot that not only took the keeper by surprise but the crowd as well judging by the delayed reaction to the ball hitting the back of the net.

And then history repeated itself. The Lilywhites took going ahead as a cue to rest on their laurels and having looked dead and buried not a minute earlier, Witton were allowed to rediscover their earlier tempo and they began to swarm over a Mossley side that seemed more overly pre-occupied with giving the ball away in the cheapest and silliest manner possible. Once more a goal looked inevitable and it duly arrived with fifteen minutes of the match left when Andy Kinsey applied the final touch during a mad scramble in the Mossley goalmouth.

The impetus was now with the men from Cheshire and the home side had to endure a couple of scares before they were able to wrestle control of the game away from their opponents for the final five minutes and come close to winning the match themselves. The closest being an effort from Matty Kay that keeper Matt Cooper did extremely well to claw away for a corner.

Looking back at the game from a distance (and apologies for this distance being two full weeks – far more important things taking priority at the moment I’m afraid) it was probably one of the best ones this season in terms of twists and excitement.

That’s counterbalanced though by another display of Mossley at both their best and worst. When they’re the former they are an impressive team to watch in full flow: moving quickly from box to box and wing to wing with a fluidity that you don’t often see at this particular level of football. When they’re the latter though they’re… well, let’s just euphemistically say that they resemble a different kind of fluidity altogether.

The up and down nature of the side though seems so ingrained that it’s something we’ll probably never be able to shake off and we’ll spend the rest of whatever days we have left riding this little roller coaster. Actually it doesn’t sound quite so bad like that, does it?

Unless you really hate roller coasters of course.

Wakefield 3 - 2 Mossley

2011-01-30T15:46:00.000Z

The second half to Mossley's 2010/11 league campaign got off to the same start as the first half did way back in those dim and distant days of last August; a more innocent time when life seemed simpler and the temperature was roughly one degree warmer than it is now.

Defeat this time though came not at the hands of Bamber Bridge, or within the familiar confines of Seel Park, but across the Pennines in that strange land known as Yorkshire. Wakefield to be more exact: the home of a maximum security prison, a sizeable proportion of Britain's rhubarb supply and Wakefield F.C..

Things didn't start well for the Lilywhites with the visitors shipping three goals within the opening 30 minutes and while there was an improvement in the hour of the match that was left, it wasn't enough to rescue the game. It wasn't only the game Mossley lost either as defender Aaron Chalmers picked up an injury serious enough to necessitate a trip to the nearby hospital (a journey a Wakefield player had made not much earlier) and one which could see him miss a sizeable chunk of what's left of the season.

If I'd gone to College Grove I'd have been able to offer a few more details of what happened during the game (and should you want those blanks filled then I suggest going here or here) but I was a lot closer to home watching one Mossley side end the night as winners.

Mossley Reserves 2 - 0 AFC Fylde Reserves

And a thoroughly deserved victory it was too for the second string/youth team... when it belatedly got under way.

Why belatedly? Well see if you can spot the reason for yourself with the following picture that was taken at the scheduled kick-off time:

That's right - it's another chapter in the ongoing saga of Mossley's floodlights.
Following what seemed to be a bit of trouble getting them working during the first half of the Harrogate game a few days earlier, it took a good while longer to get all the floodlights up and running for this one.

Both sides did their warm-up under three lights and then two before a complete descent into darkness mere minutes before the match was due to start. 7:45pm came and went before there was a brief flicker and part of the pitch became illuminated...

...and be followed a short while later by the lights on the opposite side of the pitch finally stirring into action. By the time all six had got up to full beam it was 8 o'clock and the game could finally get started.

The visitors were the more impressive team during the initial exchanges - a couple of shots from distance flying narrowly wide of the Lilywhites goal - but the moment Mossley got to grips with game the home side never once looked like losing. In fact the only surprising thing on the night was that it took them until the 10th minutes of the second half to finally find the back of the net.

It was a goal worth waiting for though. Jordan Cuff cut in from the right wing and from 25 yards out let fly with an angled shot that looped over the goalkeeper dipped just under the crossbar; one of those rare efforts that you knew was going in the second it left his boot.

The result sealing second goal arrived quarter of an hour later and courtesy of the clubs England Schools Under 18 squad member, Fabio Abreu. Compared to the opening strike this one was merely a tap in but the move building up to it was impressive enough in itself.

There should have been more goals as Fylde slowly fell apart but there won't be too many amongst the smattering of people in attendance who'll be disappointed with what they saw. Actually I haven't seen many games with better, flowing football than this one at Seel Park this year and, considering it was free to watch, with a better value/money ratio too.

Mossley 3 - 0 Harrogate Railway Athletic

2011-01-26T14:42:00.000Z

With the match against Warrington seven days earlier still fresh in my memory - or to be more exact given the abject nature of what transpired during it: keeping me awake at night, terrified of going to sleep in case the nightmares return (the looks of horror and cries of agony as the referee signalled a misery prolonging four minutes of injury time will probably haunt me for years to come) - it wasn't without a certain amount of trepidation that I set foot again inside Seel Park.

Thankfully however that apprehension turned out to be unwarranted as this proved to be a thoroughly more pleasant use of a Saturday afternoon in winter.

Supporters were still making their way to their favoured spots on the terraces when the first chance of the game presented itself. With barely thirty seconds on the clock Harrogate keeper Craig Parry was forced into a scrambling save to turn a low shot from Michael Oates behind for a corner. By the time Parry was called into action again though Mossley should really have been at least one goal up, possibly two.

The possible part of that equation comes from Harrogate’s first attack. Jon Maloney robbed Mossley captain Graham Kay of possession on the edge of the penalty area and while he didn’t have that much time to pick his spot as Peter Collinge charged off his line to narrow the options available to him, he should have done better than to curl an effort past the wrong side of the post. If that was a half chance then what followed on their second attack was as gilt edged as they come.

An inch perfect cross to Andrew Jackson, unmarked and stood in front of an open goal (well it wouldn’t be a proper Mossley match if this didn’t happen, would it?), was inexplicably sent careering wide of the target by the Harrogate winger. I’m not sure how he managed to miss, and I don’t think he does either, but there was a mass exhalation of relief - plus a fair amount of sniggering - to be heard from the stands as he lay on the floor with his head in his hands.

The miss appeared to kick the Lilywhites out of their post-first minute lethargy and they responded with a few chances of their own that came close to breaking the deadlock. The best ones fell to Kristian Dennis who was twice put clean through on goal and denied on both occasions by some hesitant finishing and some brave goalkeeping by Parry; the bravery not coming from the danger he put himself into in order to make the save but from his decision to wear a luminous yellow shirt that was, at best, a size too small. Not the most flattering of looks for a semi-professional footballer.

Play then swung from end-to-end until the final fifteen minutes of the half when it became more and more confined to the end Harrogate were defending. I could at this point spend the next hour or two describing the chances that fell Mossley’s way during this passage of play but it’s easier to let you watch them for yourself. I know it’s lazy but if a picture paints a thousand words just think how long this report would be without the video!

Also included in the above footage (along with a very brief cameo by one of the assistant referees) are the goals Mossley eventually ended up scoring.

The first goal turned out to be the last act of the opening period and another to add to the already lengthy list of goals Mossley have scored from outside the box this season. Harrogate failed to clear a corner properly and after Matty Kay looped the ball into the net from the edge of the ‘D’. The second came after the Lilywhites had weathered their now customary post half-time sluggishness; Kristian Dennis finally coming out on top in a one-on-one battle with Parry after Mike Fish had opened up the visitors defence for him with a smart pass.

Chances continued to come and go at both ends of the pitch before the home side finally put the result to bed with the final whistle looming. Like the second goal, the third came through a nice piece of play around the Harrogate box and finished with Matty Kay stepping inside a challenge from a defender and curling a shot beyond the dive of Parry.

It would be nice to say that this moment was the end to the day’s events but this being Mossley there’s always a cloud to accompany every silver lining. The cloud in this case was Ben Richardson receiving his second yellow card of the game for debating his first yellow card - given a few minutes earlier for timewasting – with the referee.

Despite the numerical disadvantage the home side went close to adding a fourth goal during the lengthy amount of time added on after the ninetieth minute, most of it due in part to the thankfully not as bad as it first seemed collision between the concrete pitch surround and the back of Harrogate centre half Wayne Harratt’s head. His replacement must have undergone a similar experience at some point too as a bump on the noggin can be the only reason for his on-field reference to a side from the outskirts of north east Manchester as being scousers.

Besides signalling the end of the match, the last sound to emerge from the referee’s whistle also marked the halfway point of Mossley’s league campaign: twenty two games played with another twenty two more to come in the next thirteen weeks. Although that may rise to twenty four in fourteen weeks should Mossley reach the play-offs and have a successful campaign – a situation that doesn’t sound quite as far-fetched as it once did now that the Lilywhites sit five points off a top side position.

There’s no point in getting carried away with what might be just yet however. As tantalisingly close to a play-off spot as the club is, a heck of a lot can happen between now and the end of April to de-rail everything. Actually there are enough games left to be played for a heck of a lot to happen three or four times over and this being Mossley it’s hardly likely that it’ll be the ‘good times’ which will be stuck on repeat. We live to be pleasantly surprised though.

Trafford 1 - 4 Mossley

2011-01-22T23:50:00.000Z

When a football club is over a hundred years old you find that there aren't many situations that present themselves which require the use of a sentence that includes the phrase 'for the first time ever.'

By this stage of a club's lifespan new experiences are usually limited to cup finals, promotions, relegations and going a full twelve months without the sudden discovery of financial black hole which threatens to drag it into oblivion. This week however Mossley managed a first that occupies the middle ground between success and outright failure: a league game victory at Trafford's Shawe View ground. I know it doesn't have the same glow as a trophy win or the rubbernecking appeal of a club blinking out of existence but you have to take time out once in a while to appreciate these smaller moments of history too.

Details of how this Mossley side (2011 vintage) finally laid the ghost of so many win-free years to rest can be found elsewhere. If you prefer just a précis though Oates, Dennis, Egan and Fish (the club's four forwards and not a firm of solicitors) all scored one goal each while Trafford offered very little in return - their goal coming when an attempted clearance ricocheted off ex-Lilywhite Joe Shaw and into the net.

The added bonus of returning victorious from the little corner of Flixton that Trafford inhabit are the three points that put Mossley into a top ten position in the league for the first time this season: a first that is in some ways equally as impressive considering that not so long ago the prospect of a relegation battle looked a very real possibility.

This being football though, and more specifically Mossley, it's still too early to totally discount the possibility of spending April in a dogfight at the foot of the table. After all it wouldn't be the first time.

Mossley 1 - 1 Warrington Town

2011-01-18T18:36:00.000Z

If what follows this paragraph seems dull, lacking points of interest, causes your eyelids to feel heavy and/or appears to be interminable, I will have for the first time successfully captured the true essence of a match that the report is pertaining to.

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:
Smiffy gets a four legged apprentice.
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.

Chorley 2 - 1 Mossley

2011-01-15T11:22:00.000Z

It was going to happen sooner or later but Mossley's unbeaten streak turned into a losing run, albeit a run that currently stands as one game, at (deep breath) The Chorley Nissan Victory Park Stadium.

For someone who didn't go, what went on during the match besides the number of goals scored is hard to fathom out due to the acute disparity of opinions between both fan bases. The official Mossley match report and comments from attendees on the club forum insinuate that Mossley were paragons of the beautiful game; misunderstood angels denied a point through shadowy machinations.

The Chorley take on proceedings though tells a tale of the extreme opposite, one which makes the Lilywhites out to be unpunished thugs and the kind of team that no-one wants to see the club they support labelled as.

The truth about what actually happened - as is often the case when there are two differing points of rose tinted views - probably lies somewhere in between. There are however two indisputable facts. The first is that Mossley lost to a penalty awarded to their hosts in the 94th minute of the match and the second is that given the animosity which has sprung up, the return fixture at Seel Park in March is going to be very interesting to say the least.

Radcliffe Borough 0 - 4 Mossley

2011-01-11T10:10:00.000Z

Here we are, eight days and three games into 2011 and Mossley are still yet to drop a point.

It may be a statistic that possibly won’t have a shelf life beyond the impending midweek trip to title chasing Chorley but it’s impressive all the same considering it’s not something the Lilywhites have a habit of doing at the start of a new calendar year. 2005 being the last time in case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t.

After confining their goal scoring in the previous game against Clitheroe to the first half, the Lilywhites had a bit of change and ran in all four goals scored in this match during the second period. Michael Fish opened the day’s account with a penalty, Matty Kay added a second and in the final minute both Danny Egan (for once shaking off the ‘unlucky’ tag that usually prefixes his name during matches) and Kristian Dennis grabbed a goal apiece; the latter with another strike from long range which is fast becoming his trademark. So much so that his goals against Clitheroe from around the penalty spot are looking like his equivalent of a tap in.

As you’ve probably guessed by now I wasn’t at the match so if you wish to read a fuller account of what went on at Stainton Park on Saturday then I suggest clicking here or here if you want a view from the other side. If you don’t then you could always click somewhere else. Here’s as good a place as any.

Mossley 3 - 2 Clitheroe

2011-01-08T14:36:00.001Z

If for some reason you’d chosen this first home match of 2011 to introduce either yourself or someone you know to watching Mossley then you couldn’t have picked a better one to do it as it contained everything good, bad and infuriating there is about following the Lilywhites.

Absolute highs and lows of the opposite extreme contained separately in two easily digestible chunks of forty five minutes. Although the three quarters of an hour containing the low points seemed an awful lot longer.

It’s the highs we start with though and Mossley’s perfect opening to the match. Only five minutes had elapsed when Andy Watson got just enough of a touch on the ball to turn Ben Richardson’s scuffed free-kick past Danny McDonald in the Clitheroe goal.

Eight minutes and another free-kick later it was two. On this occasion however the goal sprung from a poorly executed set-piece by the opposition on the edge of the home side’s penalty area. Mossley broke forward quickly and despite a Clitheroe player stopping an initial attempt to send Kristian Dennis clear with one of the most deliberate handballs I’ve seen for a while, a pass was eventually put through that sent the forward scurrying towards the visitor’s box where he made slipping the ball under McDonald and into the net look surprisingly easy.

Dennis’s second goal (and Mossley’s third) in the 32nd minute was a near carbon copy his first; the only difference being that he decided to take the ball around McDonald before sliding it between the posts. And if it hadn’t been for the referee refusing to play the advantage as he galloped through the Clitheroe defence just before the interval it’s possible he could have finished the period with a hat-trick of virtually identical goals.

Three goals isn’t a bad return for one half of football against a side in third spot in the table but if there’s one possible teensy-weensy bit of criticism (heck, it wouldn’t be a proper report on this blog if there wasn’t) it’s that it was only three as it doesn’t do justice to just how dominant Mossley were. There was an abundance of extremely good play from the men in white shirts but not a lot of it resulted in shots on goal or to be more specific, shots on target. Looking back through the video footage of that opening period the goals (clips of which to come at a later date) were the only shots that the keeper actually had to try and stop. His failure to do so was much appreciated though by the majority of people watching him.

So that was the good bit: one of the best halves of football I’ve seen Mossley play this season. What followed after the break though didn’t really quite come close to matching it. By some considerable distance.

To be fair to the Lilywhites they did begin pretty much from where they’d left off. Dennis was prevented from galloping off on another one-on-one with McDonald by an offside call which is now the new benchmark for all contentious decisions and Aaron Chalmers directed a free header over the bar from a corner kick. Then it all began to go a bit wrong.

The wobble started in the 50th minute when Matty Kay was forced to leave the field with an injury. The departure of Darryl Weston for the same reason seven minutes later however turned that wobble into the full blown shakes. With the home side’s experienced central midfield pairing gone Clitheroe (who’d come out after the break finally looking like a side pushing for promotion) began to run rampant. The movement, marking, smart passing and discipline which the Lilywhites first half performance had been built on was replaced by fear, desperation and ridiculously stupid challenges – one or two of which were lucky to escape being punished by a red card.

Fortunately there was one person who hadn’t succumbed to the blind panic affecting the rest of his team mates and that was Peter Collinge who kept his former team at bay single handed, literally at times. Such was the pressure though that even he couldn’t stop the inevitable as Clitheroe finally found the back of the net in the 65th minute. He had a good go mind you, pulling off a superb stop to deny the initial effort coming from a corner on the right. Unfortunately it was a save in vain as the ball rebounded out to Danny Williams and with no-one marking or closing him down he was afforded more time than he should have been to pull a goal back.

Mossley’s net then lead a charmed life as the ball bounced off bodies being thrown in its path or, as in the case of one particularly fraught spell of a few seconds, rolled slowly along the goal line as players from both sides swung legs at it in an attempt to divert it in one of two directions. The pressure was incessant and not helped by the Lilywhites constantly surrendering what little possession they had by continuously launching the ball down the middle of the pitch to Clitheroe’s centre halves, enabling them to start another attack in which they proceeded to run rings around us.

And that’s how the match played out, Mossley grimly hanging on to their two goal lead in the face of unrelenting pressure until it became a one goal lead four minutes from time; Danny Kinsey’s strike setting the stall out for a bum puckering end to the match.

Except it didn’t. With the result balancing on a knife edge and the nerves getting increasingly more strung out Mossley actually managed to put their opponents on the back foot for the first time since the opening stages of the half. They even fashioned a couple of chances too, one having a familiar look to it – Dennis breaking clear of the Clitheroe back line – but not a familiar ending as McDonald clawed away his shot.

Mossleys cause was helped as well by Clitheroe’s efforts to fashion an equaliser becoming a little more frantic as time wore on and rushed passes lead to mistakes and less time in front of the home goal. There was still time for a couple of heart in mouth moments but – and it may have been only by some badly chewed finger nails – Mossley hung on for the three points.

As well as the warm glow that comes with all wins the match provided another service in giving seasoned followers of the Lilywhites the knowledge that while the year may have changed some things remain stubbornly the same: that no matter how big a lead the side has built up, there’ll always be the thought in the back of your mind that says we might, just might, have done enough to hang on for a draw.

Woodley Sports 3 - 4 Mossley

2011-01-02T23:56:00.000Z

For the first time in five years Mossley got a new calendar year off to a winning start in what match reports are apparently legally obliged to call 'a seven goal thriller'.

At least I assume it was a thriller. Reports I've heard on the game do suggest it wasn't without its moments of high excitement, particularly in the second half when 5 of the match's 7 goals were scored. The first half however apparently contained little in the way of drama until both sides found the back of the net in its final minute.

Three of Mossley's goals came from last season's leading scorer Matty Kay but the pick of the bunch, as I'm lead to believe, was yet another effort from long range by Kristian Dennis; up until a month and a half ago a former Woodley player and someone who it appears is at his most lethal in front of goal when it's a dot on the horizon.

The win puts the Lilywhites comfortably into mid-table and it's a position they'll remain in for a while even if they keep winning due to the points gap between them and the teams directly above - the ones fighting it out for a play-off spot. With 28 games left to play it's certainly not an insurmountable gap and the possibility of closing it and finishing in the top 5 (no matter how faint it may seem at the moment) will make the next four months a little more interesting than we expected.

However, if I've jinxed everything by sharing that little bit of optimism and we now go on one of our not-exactly-uncommon losing streaks, please feel free to ignore the last paragraph and create one of your own based around a theme of looking over our shoulders nervously at the foot of the table.

The Even Later December Message

2010-12-31T16:37:00.001Z

And that's it in terms of Mossley and football and everything else for 2010; a year that has been slightly more eventful than most at Seel Park: no floodlights for half of it, home games played in a neighbouring town, some great football interspersed with some truly woeful stuff, the return of the managerial merry go round... there was never a dull moment. Oh! Wait, there was.

So what does the New Year hold besides 29 games crammed into its opening 16 weeks? Well, probably more of the same really; the odd great game here and there, a fair amount of moaning and as we haven't had one for nine or so months, a situation occurring where the club stands teetering on the edge of a financial precipice.

Actually that list could equally apply to almost every club plying their trade on this green and pleasant land, especially the last bit about money worries. A number of clubs have ceased to be this year and with no sign of this new age of austerity ending for the foreseeable future, it's almost a certainty that they'll be joined by more over the coming months and years. To those people supporting and running clubs who'll be facing such a situation in the coming weeks and months ahead: good luck.

As for things closer to home, that is to say this very blog you're reading now, there will be changes over the next calendar year. Not just design-wise but content-wise too. It won't have failed to escape your notice that this site is starting to contain fewer actual reports on Mossley's games and I don't think that's going to change any time soon. Why? Well that's a question that deserves a more detailed answer than I have time for now.

What I can say though is that the blog's scope may expand a little. To include just what though is something I'm keeping close to my chest for the time being in case it doesn't happen. After all there's no point setting yourself up for fall. Or fail to use modern internet parlance.

I'd like to take this opportunity however to thank those of you who still make the time and effort to visit this little corner of the internet and read whatever ramblings I've chosen to share with the world. It's appreciated - a lot! - so thank you and for the kind words that have been imparted too. :-)

Like I did at this time last year though I shall leave you with TVGolo's look back at 12 months of blunders, ridiculous misses, angry ball boys, one man pitch invasions and the never gets tiring at all sight of officials being knocked over:

Happy New Year and on to 2011 and whatever it may hold.

Mossley 1 - 1 Curzon Ashton

2010-12-31T15:26:00.000Z

In what can be described as a bit of a turn-up for the books, Mossley's annual home league defeat to Curzon Ashton ended in something other than a loss for the Lilywhites.

It might not have been a win but a draw is an improvement on the multi-goal hammerings we've received off our near neighbours at Seel Park in recent seasons. It's a result too that stretches our unbeaten run to over 5 weeks. Okay, it may be 5 weeks that only encompasses a grand total of 3 games due to the weather but good news is good news no matter how slightly less impressive it sounds when you look at it in finer detail.

From the things I've been told about the game it should have been a victory for the Lilywhites. However our inability to put the ball in the net when we were on top reared its head once more and the one goal we did score (another impressive edge of the box effort from Kristian Dennis apparently) was cancelled out later on when the visitors decided turn up in spirit as well as just body.

The first nine words of the previous paragraph should be a clue that you're not going to find an eyewitness account of this post-Christmas derby on here. If you want some internet musings from those of a Mossley persuasion who attended then you should visit here and here.

If you require a neutral eye's view on proceedings then you could do a lot worse than heading to Beat The First Man where NikNoCee has documented the game in one of his increasingly more frequent trips over the Pennines in search of football. While you're there you should take a bit of time to read the rest of the site because there's a reason why it has been chosen by The Guardian as one of the 100 general football blogs to follow in 2011.

Next up for the Lilywhites is a New Years Day trip to Woodley. Is there any better way to celebrate a new calendar year than spend it in a dank corner of Stockport in dank weather? At it happens the answer is yes which is I won't be there but I'm sure there'll be a proper Mossley report on here soon.

Possibly.

The Late December Message

2010-12-25T02:00:00.001Z

Christmas Filler: Part Two

2010-12-25T01:16:00.001Z

In retrospect it was probably a mistake to suffix yesterday but yesterday but one's blog entry with 'part one' as doing so has meant having to come up with a 'part two' so I don't look silly. Okay, sillier than usual.

In keeping with the minimum effort theme of the previous post I'm going to once again release into the wider public arena another video which has only ever had the eyes of a few people clapped on it. And once you watch it I've no doubt you'll be wishing that it had remained under lock and key in a dark, distant corner of the internet because - and I'm going to be brutally honest here - it's not really very good. Actually 'not really very good' is far too higher praise for it.

I'll readily admit that it's not the best one I've ever done, even by my shockingly low standards, but in my defence it captures the match perfectly. And the match in question is another fixture from the 2008/09 season but this time it's not league but cup football, or to be more precise the height of excitement that is the President's Cup, the Northern Premier Leagues answer to the question: can you come up a meaningless and universally unloved competition that blights the footballing landscape like a... sorry, I was getting away there.

Anyhoo the 'action' (purely for want of a better term) is from Mossley's 3rd round tie at Chorley (more here) and it starts with the home side already one-up.

Alright, don't say I didn't warn you:

If there's to be a 'part three' (I've now learnt not to promise such things) I'll endeavour to come up with something that's a bit more interesting.

Not much more but a bit.

Christmas Filler: Part One

2010-12-22T00:38:00.001Z

The lack of games to report on because of the weather’s current match postponing, Arctic like qualities has thrown up an interesting puzzle: How do you update a blog with something that may prove vaguely interesting to someone, somewhere whilst exerting the minimum amount of effort in its production?

After pondering this conundrum for the better part of one blink of an eye I hit upon a solution: post something I did ages ago that not very many people have seen. And that is why the next-but-one paragraph is followed by the video of a random league game (this one in fact) from two seasons ago which had previously been hidden to all but a few people… until now!

So if you're sitting there with nothing better to do for the next four or five minutes - and the fact you're reading this blog kind of suggests you haven't - then why not spend them watching Mossley pick up what was a well deserved win at the Irongate back in 2008?

Go on, you know you want to.

Cammell Laird 1 - 2 Mossley

2010-12-20T12:58:00.000Z

I almost forgot that last week, amidst the glut of postponements there has been recently due to the chilly and white flakey weather, Mossley actually managed to play a competitive game football.

As you might expect by now when it comes to away matches: I wasn’t there, so if you want to know more about the Lilywhites first ever win in Rock Ferry then click on this link.

Instead of enjoying the veritable charms of Birkenhead by night I was 41 miles away on the terraces at Seel Park, bumping the crowd watching Mossley reserves take on their equivalents from Bamber Bridge into the high single figures.

Of course I could furnish you with a report on this game but given that the only player I recognised was Lee Blackshaw it’s likely that you’d get mildly irritated by a string of sentences describing ‘thingy’ passing to ‘what’s he called’ before ‘you know, him up front, no, not the tall one’ sends a shot bobbling wide of its target.

I shall therefore just say that while it can be argued that Brig’s 5-1 victory was a little flattering, there’s another argument to be had that the margin of defeat could have been a whole lot worse had it not been for a missed penalty and other miscues from the visitors.

It would be errant of me though not to point out that the Lilywhites second string did play some very, very nice football at times - the passing, movement and awareness at times was exemplary. The problem was, much as it has been for the first team as well for a significant part of this season, all of these well-constructed moves fizzling out into nothing. There were shots at goal but all were straight at the keeper; even Blackshaw’s goal, as well taken as it was, made its way into the net under the body of the Bridge goalie.

The positive though - if there is such a thing to be taken from a hammering at home - is that it was such a young side Mossley had out that the game will probably be a valuable addition to their learning curve. Then again, how many times have we seen such things as supporters yet we still keep coming back for more?

With the weather having taken another turn for the worse and the forecast for the coming week looking decidedly frosty, the chances of seeing another game of football involving Mossley being played in 2010 is closer to zero than the temperature.

So as well as starting to save my pennies in readiness for attending the four game a week marathon we’re almost certainly going to be having in April in order to complete all our fixtures before the end of the season, I'd better come up with something to put on the blog in lieu of the trickle of match reports.

Well I have to give the two people who visit here every week something new to read, don't I?

30 Years Ago: Part Seven

2010-12-13T14:01:00.011Z

As briefly mentioned at the end of the sixth part of this blog's reminiscences about Mossley's 'golden age', the Lilywhites reward for their one goal victory over Crewe Alexandra in the 1980/81 FA Cup was...

The following articles are taken from the edition of the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter published in the week leading up to the game. Along with previewing the game and detailing the story that Mike Summerbee would not be replicating his cameo in a white shirt from the previous round, there's also news of Mossley's hi-tech approaching to securing their property; one which judging by trips to numerous grounds in the 21st Century has yet to be surpassed by advancements in technology:

After all the build-up the game unfortunately turned out to be something of a damp squib. At least it was if you were a Mossley supporter because I'm sure the travelling fans from Mansfield were reasonably happy with what transpired. The Lilywhites, while not disgracing themselves, didn't put in the kind of disciplined performance they were noted for until it was too late. Not for the first, or indeed the last, time at Seel Park there were a lot of people left to ponder on the thought: "if only..."

Below are four reports on the game taken from the Sunday and Monday editions of the tabloid newspapers:

The cup exit, as bitterly disappointing as it was, did at least mean that Mossley could concentrate on trying to secure a third successive Northern Premier League title and reaching Wembley again in the FA Trophy.

It wasn't to be though. The 13 point lead Runcorn had built up in the league while Mossley were on their FA Cup run proved to be insurmountable (it was a time when it was still only 2 points for a win) and the Lilywhites finished runners-up; a position they would end up in at the close of the following two seasons as well. In the FA Trophy Mossley made it as far as the quarter finals before they came unstuck in North Wales, losing 5-3 to Bangor City.

And with that comes the end of this look back at what happened three decades ago when Mossley, a team from a small Northern mill town, were arguably one of the top sides plying their trade outside of the professional leagues. There are a few scrapbook cuttings left but they're from a time that no-one particularly wants to relive: our mid-eighties slide to ignominy and the first of a long series of brushes with oblivion.

I hope that this and the preceding six parts brought back some happy memories for those of you who were around to experience this incredible period of the club's history first hand. If you're too young to remember or weren't following Mossley at the time then I hope they proved to be of some interest.

Most of all though I hope they brought some enjoyment. Even if it was only a little bit.

Mossley 6 - 0 Trafford

2010-11-28T14:41:00.002Z

No, your eyes do not deceive you. The score above is correct - we did indeed put six unanswered goals past Trafford. Yes, really!

To be honest I don't think I would have believed that score line if I hadn't seen it for my own eyes, especially after the way we've been playing recently, but not only was it a comprehensive win it was a thoroughly deserved one too. Then again I suppose that’s a given as surely there can be no such thing as a lucky six goal victory?

In fact the only criticism I have about the result (and it's an itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny, microscopic one at that) is that Mossley didn't score more. It wasn’t a case of ‘could have’ reached double figures: we ‘should have’ reached double figures for the first time in the club’s history.

The reason why being - and there’s no nice, sugar-coated way to put it - Trafford were shockingly awful. Not only did the visitors fail to register anything that can be remotely described as shot in the general direction of Mossley’s goal, I can’t recall them winning a corner or spending more than thirty seconds in the opposing half of the pitch.

That’s not to denigrate Mossley’s performance in any way because they played extremely well - magnificently so even - but there’s no question they were helped along the way by the most hapless display I’ve seen from a football team since… well, let’s just say it involved the Lilywhites and leave it there.

Like everybody else with a link to Mossley though I'm more than thoroughly happy with six goals the team did score, and what a set of six they were. There were no scrambled efforts or scruffy tap-ins from a matter of inches - everyone was a doozy in its own special way.

The goals started to fly in as early as the fourth minute when Callum Byrne fired the ball home from twenty yards and quarter of an hour later Kristian Dennis doubled the lead from a similar distance. Ben Richardson then added a third with a powerful close range volley before Byrne notched his second goal of the evening. A rather natty piece of ball juggling just inside the Trafford half by Mike Fish created the opening and the loanee from Rochdale lifted the ball over keeper Tom Read to finish a well worked move.

An even better passage of play took place not long after that would have undoubtedly been goal of the season if Sam Hare could have applied the finish to a move which numbered more than twenty passes and tore Trafford apart. A miskick at the vital moment though denied him both his goal and the chance to pick up a small trophy in the social club in May.

With the temperature dropping below freezing point and the ground whitening under a thick layer of frost there was a worry that the match might not see out the full ninety minutes. Happily though the ground failed to harden during the second half and in a touching show of solidarity with Mother Earth, neither did the Trafford defence.

Chances came and went for the home side with a frequency bordering on the incredible but it wasn’t until just after the hour point that the Lilywhites troubled the net again. Kristian Dennis equalling Byrne's tally for the evening with an effort that was a near carbon copy of his first goal in the preceding half.

With a bit more composure in front of goal Mossley would have added a sixth long before Matty Kay did so eight minutes from time. Last season’s top scorer taking advantage of the acres of space afforded to him to finally open his account for this campaign.

And having read about the goals you can now see them:

It’s a horrible football cliché to use but as bad as Trafford were, you can only beat what’s in front of you and Mossley (another horrible football cliché coming up) did so with some aplomb.

Will a victory as convincing and as comprehensive as this one finally kick-start our league campaign? Truthfully I’ve no idea. I thought the four goal win over Ossett a fortnight earlier might have had the same effect but that proved not to be the case so who knows? It certainly won’t do our confidence any harm at all which is no bad thing considering that we’re heading into a run of pre-Christmas games against opponents who share our lowly league position.

So get those fingers crossed. Not just for some upcoming wins but that the weather warms up and improves enough to allow the matches to be played.

Mossley 2 - 4 Lancaster City

2010-11-23T23:51:00.002Z

It's starting to feel like I'm stuck in a Groundhog Day style time loop when it comes to watching and writing about Mossley.

Dominating possession - ✔. A not overly exerted opposing goalkeeper - ✔. An over-abundance of attacks consisting of a short sequence of passes followed by a lumping the ball down the centre of the pitch - ✔. Calamitous, laugh or you'll cry defending - ✔. The opposition registering a win without having to break too much of a sweat - ✔. Leaving at the end wondering if it is going to start getting better any time soon - ✔. Looking at the fixture list and coming to the conclusion that it probably won't - ✔.

The only way I know for certain that I'm not reliving the same ninety minutes over and over again is the steadily decreasing temperature and the changing colour of the opposition's shirts.

We did get something a little bit different though. For a while it appeared that the one notable event in the first half would be Daryl Weston managing to get the ball through the window of the tea bar, which if you know the geography of Seel Park is quite some achievement. Sadly, by the time it came for the teams to leave the pitch for the break the majority of people inside the ground were wishing that the sight of pies, peas and gravy being sent flying had been the only incident worth talking about.

As a Lancaster fan on their own club forum has so accurately put it, the visitors only really played for a total of 15 minutes which straddled the interval and they left with three points. Before they took a 42nd minute lead the Dolly Blues had spent the majority of the game in their own half of the pitch, dealing comfortably with Mossley's laboured efforts to create something with all the possession they were being allowed and looking to hit the home side on the break.

And it was from one of these counter attacks that they scored the opening goal and what a goal it was. A brilliant piece of individual skill from Josh Kenworthy to take two players out of the game was supplemented by an equally impressive bit of teamwork which opened up a space for Max Rothwell to launch an unstoppable shot past Peter Collinge. It was a goal of such quality (and one that my description goes nowhere close to doing it justice) that you couldn't put any blame on Mossley for conceding. If only I could say the same for the three that followed.

It's only fair though that the midfield shoulder some of the blame for the second goal too as it was in their area of the pitch, deep into injury time at the end of the first period, that the ball was lost in a surprisingly cheap fashion. City broke upfield and despite Paul Jarvis horrifically mis-controlling a cross that was played into him on the edge of the six yard box, the lack of any close marking whatsoever meant he had time to chase the loose ball down and finally get it under control before putting his side two ahead. Two then became three ten minutes after the restart when Kenworthy took the ball off Ben Richardson and calmly slotted it past Collinge.

Going three goals down seemed to spark Mossley into taking control of the game once again (though it could be argued that the resurgence was due in part to Lancaster sitting back on their near unassailable lead as well) but not for the first time a lack of guile and incisiveness at the business end of the pitch meant they were confined to shooting from distance.

Yet it was from one of these slightly hopeful long range efforts that Mossley pulled a goal back. The ball from a Lilywhites corner wended its way to Mike Fish on the corner of the Lancaster box and with the aid of a slight deflection he curled a shot into the net to give the home side the glimmer of hope of a comeback.

It was enough of a flicker to increase the rate of huffing and puffing from the men in white shirts but the chances needed to realise that recovery were few to non-existent and any optimism left was extinguished five minutes from time. Once again the misery was self-inflicted. Cavell Coo played an ill-advised and misdirected pass across the back line which gave Rothwell the chance to break clear and register his second and Lancaster’s fourth goal of the match. The afternoon’s scoring still wasn’t completed though and in injury time Michael Thomas added a bit of respectability to the score line with an absolute humdinger of a shot from 25 yards out

Not bad for a centre half, eh?
In some respects the final score is harsh on a team that controlled so much of the game but matches aren’t won by finishing having had a greater share of the possession. If it was there’d certainly be more than four teams between us and the bottom of the table which is how it stands at the moment.

What has let us down on this and umpteen other occasions so far this season is our inability to do the fundamental basics of the game properly: attack and defend. Rather worryingly too we don’t seem any closer than we were back in August to rectifying the situation. It doesn’t matter how many times the personnel changes (and with around forty players used they’ve changed quite a lot) the same problems continue to exist.

And while they do that Groundhog Day feeling will go on, and on, and on...

30 Years Ago: Part Six

2010-11-22T13:56:00.006Z

Back in June I said that the look back at events of 30 years ago wouldn’t end with the coverage of the teams return from the FA Trophy final, simply because there was another notable event in Mossley AFC’s history during 1980.

On the 22nd of November (three decades ago to this very day in fact) the Lilywhites claimed their first, and so far only, Football League scalp in the FA Cup when they beat Fourth Division Crewe Alexandra 1-0 in the first round of that season’s competition.

Unfortunately, unlike the Trophy games, my memories of this famous victory for the club are practically non-existent because I wasn’t able to attend the game. Having spent the best part of the week leading up to the match in Manchester Royal Infirmary having had an operation to try and improve my hearing, I was under strict doctor’s orders not to leave the house for two weeks. And as welcome as a fortnight off school was, it didn’t come close to making up for the bitter disappointment ofnot making it to this game.

What I precisely did miss can be read about in the following report on the match which appeared in the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter:

It was a game also memorable for being Mike Summerbee’s last ever game of competitive football having come out of retirement (and off the back of playing alongside Pele, Michael Caine and Sylvester Stallone in Vichy France) as a favour to Mossley’s then manager, Bob Murphy. With it being his last game the fixture does get a lengthy mention in his autobiography and what follows are a few selected extracts:

My professional career had been over for eighteen months when I agreed to help out an old friend and shirt customer, Bob Murphy, who was the manager of non-League club Mossley. A couple of months earlier Bob had said he was short of players: would I turn out in an emergency if required? I said I would, not thinking he would ever be that desperate. Well, Mossley reached the first round of the FA Cup and there was Bob on the phone asking me to play against Crewe Alexandra. He registered me as an official footballer once more – and I had to find some boots again.

Michael Crawford was staying with us at the time and he took Tina (Summerbee’s wife) along to watch the game; I told him not to start laughing or anything. I had to do the best I could. I got to the ground at about 12:30pm, far earlier than I ever used to in my career, but I knew I had to warm up gradually. I was out on the pitch, gently preparing for more than an hour, and then came into the changing room.

‘I’m going to make you the substitute, Mike,’ said Murphy as I went in.

‘You can’t do that,’ I said and it wasn’t ego talking. ‘You have to put me on now, otherwise I won’t be able to play at all. It’s taken me an hour to warm up on the pitch. Put me on from the start.’

As he was doing the team talk I kept walking round all the time, kept moving. I couldn’t afford to stand still for a moment. Then it was out for the game and a fella in the crowd shouted: ‘What are you doing out on the pitch, you b*****d, Summerbee?’

‘How does five hundred quid sound?’ I said to shut him up. Actually, I was playing for nothing. For the first time in my life I was an amateur.

The Mossley pitch had a slope and we played down hill in the first half. I stayed out on the wing and just clipped a few balls in when I had the chance and jogged back to keep the team shape. At half-time it was 0-0 and I had to keep moving through the break. I could already feel the stiffness creeping into my body. In the second half we were going up the slope and to me it felt like climbing Kilimanjiro. Behind me at full-back was was a young lad who kept overtaking me and I was really struggling, sucking air up my rear end. I could hardly move but I kept going. A minute from time there was a corner on the left hand side. I went over and took it, and the centre forward, who was a big fella, rose up and, boom, the ball was in the back of the net. 1-0. We’d won the game and there were all the wide-eyed celebrations you get when a minnow wins an FA Cup tie against a League side.

The Mossley chairman came in afterwards and looked straight over at me and said: ‘You’ll be playing in the next round.’

‘No I won’t,’ was my instant reply. ‘I can’t. It will take me three weeks just to walk properly again.’

And I’ll tell you how stiff I was. I dropped the soap in the shower and I couldn’t even bend down to get it. One of the young lads had to pick it up for me. Outside I found Tina and Michael and they were laughing their heads off. That was it. Finished. Job done. It was the last match I played. The boots went in the skip again.

There are a couple of inaccuracies (the time of the goal and the centre forward didn’t score as intimated) but nothing compared to those in Neil Warnock’s book.

Some more clippings from the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter:

The reward for this 'giant-killing' was a second round tie against more Football League opposition - Mansfield Town. And it's that game which will make up the seventh and final 30 year trip down memory lane in three weeks time.

Harrogate Railway Athletic 4 - 3 Mossley

2010-11-20T13:22:00.001Z

If you look at basic facts that can be gleaned from this game - Mossley coming from behind three times before losing to a goal deep into injury time - it would appear that we were once again the unfortunate victims of an absence of luck that some fans think is responsible for our lowly league position.

The comments of those who attended the game though tell a different story; "If we'd have got ANYTHING out of this game - we wouldn't have deserved" standing out amongst many as for the first time this season the forum played host to more than a few postings questioning tactics, team selections and other points of concern that had previously only been talked about with quiet concern on the terraces.

With two home games aginst mid-table sides up next it will be interesting to see how the Lilywhites react to this latest setback. If by 9:45pm on Tuesday evening a run of one win in eight games has been extended to one win in ten outings then it's likely that the concern expressed in the aftermath won't be quite so mild mannered. Alternatively four to six points from the same games could push us up to a respectable spot in the middle of the division.

As always with this club it's going to be interesting to see what does transpire as it's never not dull... well, not often.

Mossley 4 - 0 Ossett Albion

2010-11-20T00:41:00.005Z

If you're a regular visitor to this blog it can't have failed your notice that updates have been somewhat tardy over the past few weeks. That reports on games are being posted at least a week past a point where all right minded people have given up caring.

There is a reason. Well there's a big one and a small one. The small one is that the new Call of Duty game has eaten up a proportion of my free time as I try to get past the point of being utterly rubbish at it on-line (progress update since this paragraph was first written: still utterly rubbish). The big one is that I simply couldn't be bothered. I know I've said numerous times in the past few months that I'm becoming fatigued with football but that feeling just continues to grow and grow. Why it does I may elucidate on at a later time when I'm in the mood for the argument it may possibly cause.

In the meantime though I should really get this report done, especially as in a break from the recent norm, it's on about a match that Mossley won. The scoreline suggests it was a comfortable victory and effectively it was with the Lilywhites almost dominating the game from start to finish. But it's that 'almost' bit which, no matter how well the home side played for the majority of the match, could have seen the three points slip from their grasp.

Mossley opened the scoring with their first shot on goal in fifth minute - Callum Bryne getting his temporary spell at the club off to quite the start with quite some strike - and 75 minutes and approximately 483 efforts on goal later they added a second when Mike Oates got on the end of a huge upfield punt and turned the ball past the Ossett keeper. The third followed not long after when Lee Blackshaw curled a low free kick into the bottom corner of the net and contrary to what you may have seen elsewhere, the Lilywhites final goal of the night came courtesy of Ossett's very own Ryan White. How Oates has been credited with it is a mystery I'm sure Arthur C. Clarke would have eventually got round to investigating had his TV show not finished 30 years ago and he not died in 2008.

Another mystery is why I bothered to detail the goals when you can see them for yourself - just about - in the following video:

The outcome could have been very different though if it wasn't for a brilliant piece of last ditch defending a minute or so prior to Mossley's second goal. Yes, this is the aforementioned 'almost' bit of the game where Ossett briefly got the upper hand and it stemmed from a 75th minutes change of formation from the Lilywhites.

Before the reshuffling of the pack Mossley were lined up in 5-3-2 formation with the full backs pushing forward at every available opportunity, effectively making the shape 3-5-2 for significant periods of time. It worked fantastically well too; Ossett barely got within glimpsing distance of the Lilywhites goal let alone close enough to have a shot. After the change though Mossley reverted to the flat back four they've been using for the majority of games this season and just like in the majority of games this season, the defence got wobbly and things didn't look quite so rosy.

The ball was lost and given away with embarrassing frequency in an incredibly short space of time, culminating in a moment in which Ossett should have equalised. A cross from the left arrived at the feet of one of two Albion players alone and unmarked in the middle of the Mossley penalty area. The resulting shot beat the dive of Peter Collinge but not the outstretched foot of someone in a white shirt who'd managed to get back and hook the ball off the line. I'd like to name who that player was but because it's only possible to make out shapes and not who's who at medium to long distances under the new floodlights, I can't. So to whoever it was who stopped the visitors drawing level: thank you.

Overall though this was a much improved performance from the men in white shirts. However, just as you can't get carried away after one defeat, it would be silly to do so after one good result. If we can put in performances and results like this more consistently (and against better teams than Ossett - let's be honest, they were pretty poor) then it will be time to start thinking that a corner has been turned. The outcome of the next game at Harrogate Railway should give us a clue to whether that may be soon or a while longer yet.

Chester 3 - 0 Mossley

2010-11-18T11:14:00.001Z

A fixture against the league leaders is not something you look forward to when the side you support is hovering just above the foot of the table. Doubly so when indiscipline in a cup match a fortnight earlier means four regular starters are spending the Saturday afternoon elsewhere through suspension.

There are those rare times though when everything is stacked against you and all hope looks lost, that adversity brings triumph and the underdog succeeds. The one positive that seems id to have come from the game - that we only lost 3-0 - should give you an indication that this wasn't one of those said times.

Of course being one of those namby-pamby fair weather fans I didn't make the journey to Chester; £16 on a train ticket and £9 on an entrance fee (plus whatever it cost to buy something to eat) is not something I'm willing to fork out on when money isn't exactly abundant. I'll be honest too and say that the desire to attend was also tempered by the fact I wasn't expecting a positive result of any kind at the Exacta Stadium. I did think though that we might have had them on the back foot for a few passages of the game but that doesn't appear to have happened. The comments I've heard and read from the supporters who did attend (both Mossley and Chester) doesn't paint the Lilywhites performance in too great a light.

If you'd prefer to make your own mind up on how the Lilywhites played rather than rely on the opinions of others, watching the games highlights may help you come towards a conclusion and you can do just that by clicking on this link.

So in conclusion, we lost a game and no-one is particularly shocked that we did. A verdict which could be the default one for the coming months if we're not too careful.

Ossett Albion 1 - 1 Mossley

2010-11-14T11:13:00.003Z

Following a complete calendar month of nothing but knock-out football, the always amusingly named Dimple Wells Stadium was the venue were Mossley reacquainted themselves with the run-of-the-mill mundanities of life in the Evo-Stik First Division North.

And along with the vast majority of my fellow Lilywhites supporting brethren I wasn't there to watch it which of course means that the "better supporter than you" brigade were out in force on the forum. What's laughable is that when we played at Ossett Albion three seasons ago during Gerry Quinn's reign as manager, only six Mossley supporters turned up to that particular match yet there was no thinly veiled digs at other supporters after that on the forum or producing a list of those who went (really, that happened after this game). Anyway, Smiffy has written about this little internet episode better than I have or can so I suggest popping along here to read it.

As for the game itself (a report on which is here) it sounds like it was the latest in the long line of what might have beens had but just a couple of an apparent hatful of chances been taken. However, even if it was three points tossed away through our ongoing inability to stick the ball into a 17.86 m² target with any regularity in league fixtures, after four consecutive defeats a draw isn't so bad. Although I do though reserve the right to change that particular opinion should we fail to stave off relegation to the Vodkat League by a solitary point.

Mossley 2 - 3 Nantwich Town

2010-11-09T10:40:00.002Z

Because there are only so many ways you can write about a defeat that could have been avoided if we'd taken a fraction of our chances and defended a lot better, this is going to brief as I exhausted all of this season's variation on that particular theme after the loss to Curzon Ashton in the last match.

As you may gather from that opening paragraph it was same-o same-o from the Lilywhites as they exited the FA Trophy in the same manner they left three other cup competitions in the preceding eleven days: in a disappointing fashion wondering what might have been if they hadn't been quite so... well, disappointing.

Part of the reason for the employment of the 'd' word is that Nantwich, despite residing in the division immediately above Mossley, didn't look anything special yet still left Seel Park with a win and three goals despite rarely threatening the Lilywhites goal.

I can't remember them mounting a single meaningful attack in the opening 39 minutes leading up to their equaliser. It was a leveller that could have been easily avoided but a player losing his marker, a poor clearance and a heavy enough deflection off a defender to warrant the use of the term o.g. proved sufficient enough to wipe away Mossley's advantage; a lead that had been gained 10 minutes earlier when Sam Hare bundled home a cross from the left wing by Aaron Chalmers.

In reality Mossley should have had the game sewn up before Michael Lennon put the visitors back on level terms but the on-going problem of failing to stick the ball in the back of the net when presented with a golden opportunity meant that the Dabbers always remained in the tie.

This failure to kill off the Cheshire side was brought into sharp focus 7 minutes into the second period when the home defence did its Red Sea impression and parted, allowing Glynn Blackhurst to go ‘Moses’ and break clear of the chasing pack and score. Although Andy Watson cancelled out the lead with a header just after the hour, Nantwich edged ahead again when Rodney Jack finished a great move by smashing the ball past Peter Collinge. It wasn't too dissimilar to a move Mossley had themselves made minutes earlier. The only difference being that whereas Nantwich had found the back of the net, Mossley barely found the arms of the goalkeeper with a weak bobbling shot.

The game should have been forced into a replay in the dying stages of injury time but half of current Mossley's problems were put into a nice nutshell when Mike Fish headed high over the cross bar while unmarked in front of a near open goal. And with it went the Lilywhites hopes of winning a trophy this season.

I know that silverware through winning the league or the play-offs is still a mathematical possibility. Viewing recent games though through some non-rose coloured visual aids suggests the chances of doing so are so small that if you were to read it as a percentage you’d have to go through 10 decimal places before you hit a number that wasn’t a zero.

If the problems currently plaguing the team can be sorted in an expedient manner, a top-half of the table finish isn’t beyond question. If they aren’t… well, the reports on this blog are going to start to look very, very samey indeed. Even more so than usual.

Mossley 0 - 2 Curzon Ashton

2010-10-28T23:46:00.002+01:00

In the grand scheme of things the NPL/Unibond/Evo-Stik President's Cup is the New Coke of non-league trophy competitions. It's a blight on the fixture list, taking up a valuable midweek slot that could host a league game and help alleviate the inevitable fixture pile-up come April. A contest played in barely filled grounds (even by this levels standards) in which victories are met with the same shrug of the shoulders that greet defeats.

The thing is though that when you've just crashed out of two cups in the space of five days its stature does grow a little; it suddenly doesn't look quite so meaningless. There's still no great wailing and gnashing of teeth at being beaten but there is a touch of despondency at seeing another faint hope of silverware disappear. The melancholy heightened further by it coming at the hands of your near neighbours - Curzon Ashton doing to Mossley in the President's Cup what they'd done in the Manchester Premier Cup the previous Tuesday.

It only took ten minutes for Curzon's opener to arrive and in news that probably won't come as a shock, it came with the help of a gaping hole that appeared in the middle of Mossley's back line. The 'parting of the waves' gave Daniel Shannon a clear run towards the net being guarded by debut making keeper Joe Potts (yes we've got another goalie, a game too late mind, but another goalie nonetheless) and to be fair to the newbie there was little he could do to prevent the visiting number 10 from pinging the ball past him.

The remaining 35 minutes of the half became a competition as to who could miss the easiest chance and for a long time it looked like Matty Kay would take the honours for Mossley with a volley over an open net from six yards. Unfortunately the Lilywhites couldn't even claim victory in this little contest as Curzon took the inaugural "How The Hell Did He Miss That?" title and runners-up spot just before the break through wild efforts from Shannon and Carlos Gazapo.

The second half saw Mossley finally force David Carnell into making a couple of saves, including one outstanding full length stop to deny Richard Bennet from putting the home side on level terms. Carnell's efforts ought to have only delayed the equaliser for a split-second though as the loose ball bounced into the path of Danny Murray, but with the goal no more than three yards in front of him the substitute hit the post.

The Lilywhites actually enjoyed plenty of possession over the course of the second period. However, the number of chances that came from it were a fraction of what they should have been because of all the, colloquially speaking, 'faffing around' they were doing; taking an extra touch or ten when there was a chance to deliver a ball into the box, passing instead of shooting... the kind of things that elicit low but audible groans from the terraces.

Curzon had a few chances to put the game to bed before they finally did so in the last minute. If I put my rose coloured spectacles on I could say that Shannon took advantage of Mossley pushing men forward to break clear and score his second goal of the game. It would be telling fibs though because a) we weren't really going all out for a goal in those closing stages and b) it's not as though he and his team mates weren't breaking clear when we were apparently putting an onus on defending.

As I intimated earlier getting knocked out of this competition isn't a cause for alarm. That it completes a rapid hat-trick of cup exits is slightly worrying though as it means we're one FA Trophy defeat away from bringing the curtain down on our season. I know that if we win our games in hand on the teams above in the league that we'll be there or thereabouts at the top of the division but I'm enough of a realist to know that that's a mighty big 'if'.

So keep your fingers crossed for good things in the Nantwich game on Saturday and lets hope we can keep the season alive for a short while longer.

Mossley 2 - 6 Darlington

2010-10-25T18:38:00.005+01:00

As the years come and go and the names and faces change, one thing remains constant at Seel Park: Mossley's ability to press the self-destruct button in big games.

Cups, big prize money, the chance for a moment in the spotlight, all of them hone tantalisingly into view every so often, calling to us like the Sirens did to ancient mariners. The analogy doesn’t end there either because just like those Greek ships and sailors who were tempted by the charms of the three unearthly women, we usually end up getting dashed across the rocks too; a look that’s a cross between anger and stunned disbelief on our faces as we disappear beneath the foamy waves for the third time. And a quick look at the score line which heads this article (go on, have a glimpse) should tell you that this isn’t going to be the time where I go on to explain in detail the exception to that rule.

For the first 25 minutes of this 4th Qualifying Round FA Cup tie Mossley were arguably the side most comfortable with the way things were transpiring. Apart from a corner in the second minute Darlington hadn't been within sight of the home goal, whereas the Lilywhites had actually forced the Quaker's keeper into making one important save and were starting to make inroads through a huge gap in the left hand side of the visitors defence. All the good work - the potential - though was undone in an instant as mistakes from two people swung the game heavily in the Blue Square Premier clubs favour.

Firstly, and sadly not for the first time this season (or even the last time in this game), Andy Watson dallied far too long on the ball before getting himself in a muddle and gifting the opposition possession. The person bestowed with this extreme act of generosity was Chris Senior who was probably chuckling away to himself about how he was going to open the scoring when he was upended by goalkeeper Peter Collinge who, having come charging towards the edge of his area in an attempt to stop Darlington capitalising on the error, succeeded in only compounding the blunder by giving away a penalty and receiving a red card for his troubles.

And it's at this point that the second mistake I alluded to kicked in. When the teams were being announced prior the match the notable lack of a goalkeeper among Mossley's seven substitutes became a small talking point - mostly revolving about how unwise a decision it was should the worst happen and our starting number one’s game come to an end sooner than expected. Little did we know that this conversation would be quite so prophetic and even littler did we know at the time the precise reason as to why there was no one on the bench to take Collinge’s place in goal.

No, that's not right: there's actually no rationale at all for why we shouldn't have had a replacement ready to come on and fill such a specialist position, especially as there were so many spots on the bench available. For reasons that I hope will be explained sooner rather than later, the Mossley management had allowed our reserve goalkeeper to become cup-tied in an earlier round meaning we couldn't call on his much needed services. But even with this being the case, there was nothing to stop the club bringing in a goalkeeper on a temporary, emergency basis to cover the possibility of us needing one? We and other clubs have done this in the past so why not this time? It’s not as though it’s a situation suddenly sprung upon us. Criticise me all you want for saying this (because I know doing so out loud has become a taboo subject in recent years at Seel Park) but it’s really, really bad management - pure and simple.

Anyhoo, back to the game. Right back Ben Richardson was given the task of trying to stop a professional side scoring a goal for 65 minutes and unsurprisingly he failed just 30 seconds into his task as Tommy Wright fired the spot kick past him. There's a small argument at this point to be had about whether Wright should have been on the pitch himself. Prior to the goal his only contributions to the match were three wild elbows swung into the heads of Mossley players (only picking up a booking for the third one) and a dive on the halfway that was so ridiculous that not only should he have been shown a yellow card, but forced to apologise to everyone in the ground over the p.a. as well for such an embarrassingly poor piece of gamesmanship.

His team mate Chris Moore wasn't quite so fortunate in escaping a booking for amateur dramatics. From where I was stood - admittedly at the opposite end of the pitch - it looked like Richardson in his role as makeshift custodian had taken out the Darlington player as he lined up a shot. Instead of another penalty and another red card though, the triple salco with full pike that Moore embellished his time in the air with persuaded the officials that the whole thing was a nefarious plot to seek an unfair advantage.

The relief didn't last too long though as Mark Bridge-Wilkinson soon doubled the Quakers lead (another beneficiary of Mossley's charitable nature with the ball) and out came the calculators in preparation of tallying up the coming deluge of goals.

Something rather unexpected proceeded to happen though. Rather than sit back in the hope of keeping the score down to low double figures, Mossley began to press forward and six minutes from the interval they halved the arrears. An angled ball from Lee Blackshaw made its way inch perfectly through the aforementioned hole in the Quaker's back line and Mike Oates finished the move with a low shot under keeper Sam Russell. Yes, Quakers and Oates. If we'd won I'd have taken the time to come up with a tortured gag in which that was the punchline so see, even this defeat has a silver lining.

With a tiny bit more luck Mossley might have even grabbed an equaliser before the break as they forced a series of corners which got the visitors defence a little jittery judging by the “words of encouragement” passing between their players. Even though that leveller didn’t arrive, what they had done was enough to suggest that the game might not be quite the walkover for Darlington that people were beginning to expect after Collinge’s dismissal.

That belief lasted until the third minute of the second half when another cock-up at the back gave Senior a clear run on goal and the opportunity to restore his sides two goal advantage. Six further minutes later that hope of an unlikely comeback was rather incredibly back again. As if to prove that anything the Mossley defence could do, they could do worse, Quakers centre half Kevin Austin suddenly seemed to become confused by the small round thing which had appeared on the ground in front of him. Just when it looked like we were about to see a world first: a grown man lose a staring contest with a football, Steve Settle picked up possession and slotted a shot under the advancing Russell to bring the ten men of Mossley back into the match.

For a while the game balanced on a knife edge as it became a question of which defence would wobble next. Unfortunately it turned out to be Mossley’s as Austin atoned for his error by firing home from a corner after being left unmarked on the back post. To be fair to the Lilywhites however an unmarked opponent or two was to be expected given they were down to nine players at the time; midfielder Chris Rowney was on the touchline receiving treatment for an injury as the ball crossed the line.

His absence from the pitch was made permanent though with a quarter of the match still to play when he received a straight red card for a... actually, I don’t know what to call it. To label it a tackle would be giving it a status it frankly doesn’t deserve. It was a spectacularly awful challenge and that the Darlington player was able to leave the pitch without the aid of a stretcher is something we should be thankful for. And to whoever clapped Rowney as trudged off the pitch: Really? That was worthy of applause? A potential leg breaking incident which also left us to play out the last 25 minutes with nine men? I thought we were better than that.

Sorry, did I say nine? What I meant to say was eight because in the bout of handbags that developed after Rowney's moment of infamy, Settle received his second yellow card of the afternoon. What he did during those few seconds of pushing and shoving that was any different to what players in a red shirt were doing is beyond me but off he went, no doubt ruing the first and wholly avoidable yellow card he'd picked up minutes earlier for pointlessly arguing with the referee.

With Mossley now employing a formation that consisted of one man up front and six players dotted across the pitch behind him, the fans sat back and waited for the proverbial cricket score to arrive. Goals did arrive but it didn't turn out to be quite the rout that many probably feared.

Darlington's fifth goal involved a mixture of the bad luck and hopeless misjudgement which had haunted Mossley all afternoon. Watson once again gave the ball away when there was no danger at all but it looked like the error wouldn’t be punished as Gary Smith hit what can only be best described as a pea roller towards goal. However when the gods are against you they really rub it in and as Ben Richardson dropped to stop the shot, the ball hit a divot and bounced over his head and into the net. Five minutes from time Chris Senior completed the scoring with a venomous shot from the corner of the box; a goal as simple and as straightforward as that description makes out.

Between the fifth and sixth goals Mossley themselves went close to adding another to the score sheet and it took a very good piece of goalkeeping to stop Oates firing off a shot after the forward had waltzed through one of the gaps where the visitors defence really should have been.

All it did though was make you wonder what might have been had the game been eleven versus eleven for the entire ninety minutes. Or even ten (including a proper, back-up goalkeeper) against eleven because any visiting supporter who says they were comfortable with a man advantage is kidding themselves.

The Quakers (if you’ll pardon the coming pun) were no great shakes. During the period of time both sides were equal in number they didn’t manage a single shot or put together an attack that didn’t have its genesis in a Mossley defensive mistake. And even at the end of an opening period in which they’d played almost half of it against ten men and a makeshift keeper, they’d only managed two shots on target (one being a penalty) and conceded a goal.

“What might have been” though is a question we ask too many times after games like this. When you look back through Mossley’s recent history the big games always seem to come with a caveat: we played well and but for suspensions/team selections/tactics/indiscipline we would have won, and this one is no different.

From a personal point of view I’m disappointed to read our manager’s post match comments in the print edition of the Oldham Chronicle (they aren’t in the online version) in which he puts the responsibility for the defeat on mistakes made by players. I have no problem with that if he also acknowledges the blunder he made in not having a substitute keeper available, which played just big a part in the loss as the other reasons, but he doesn’t; the responsibility for the loss is put squarely on the shoulders of the players which is a tad unfair. If you’re going to proportion blame after a defeat like this then include a mea culpa or don’t say anything at all.

I’d probably better end this now so that the one or two of you who’ve made it this far can go and bathe your eyes with Optrex and return to everyday life but a final word about the Darlington fans. Apart from three drunk supporters at the end of the game leaning over the balcony outside the clubhouse calling Mossley fans s**t, they were an incredibly friendly bunch.

There wasn’t any of the “we’re better than you” and belittling attitude we’ve come across from some fans of other clubs recently. And yes, by that I do mean Halifax. The difference between the Shaymen and the Quakers was so marked it was untrue, especially when unlike the former, the latter have a more valid reason for acting superior and giving it the ‘big I am’. Because of that I wish them the very best of luck in the next round against Bristol Rovers (the prize we could have won) and with that defence I think they may need it .

Who knows, maybe we’ll get the chance to right the wrongs in this match next year. If we do, lets hope Odysseus isn’t registered to a club and cup tied?

Mossley 2 - 3 Curzon Ashton

2010-10-22T22:56:00.002+01:00

Back in August I said that this season I wasn't going to put the football ahead of my health and it turns out that this Manchester Premier Cup game was the first game to fall under that self-imposed edict.

As much as I'd like to have seen a Mossley side full of players with their minds on Saturday's FA Cup match take on Curzon Ashton, the prospect of spending Wednesday feeling like somebody was using a pneumatic drill to massage my spine as a 'reward' for my attendance meant that while the two teams went head to head at a cold Seel Park, I was at home with a mug of tea and looking forward to being able to put my shoes on the next day without experiencing some quite excruciating agony.

Fortunately there are some souls who've been better assembled than I have and they've written some words about the fixture and placed them on the world wide web. For the Mossley view you can visit the official site or Six Tame Sides, for an independent view there's this blog and for the Curzon view... well, I'm sure if you give the club a ring someone will tell you over the phone.

What the 3-2 result in Curzon's favour means is that we won't be gracing the Boundary Park frigidaire with our presence in May for the final. Bad news for Mossley and their trophy winning aspirations but good news for those of us who like to pack our winter woolies away by the middle of April.

Shepshed Dynamo 1 - 4 Mossley

2010-10-18T12:45:00.002+01:00

And the cup wins keep on coming.

While Mossley may be struggling for consistency in the League, their form in the cup competitions has been quite the opposite (as long as you pretend that the League Cup game against Trafford last month never happened) with Shepshed Dynamo becoming the latest side to fall defeated at the colourfully attired feet of the Lilywhites.

It was quite the convincing victory in Leicestershire too by all accounts (which can be read here and here) with Shepshed themselves declaring that they were flattered by the score line; Mossley’s third 4-1 victory in the space of four games.

Not only is it a win that puts us into the Second Qualifying Round of the FA Trophy (and a home tie against Nantwich Town) it also means we’ll go through the month of October without having played a single league fixture; our cup matches having taken up all eight possible match day slots.

With the likelihood of there being another bad winter on the horizon as well - and the all the postponements that will inevitably bring - it’s probably time to start saving now for the three or four matches we’re probably going to be playing every week in April as we plough through the backlog of fixtures.

Mossley 4 - 1 Lincoln Moorlands Railway

2010-10-15T23:40:00.002+01:00

Breathe out... ... ... and relax.

It's a hearty "phew!" to be exhaled too because this game wasn’t quite as straight forward as what the score line above may lead you to believe. At face value it suggests that Mossley may have dominated proceedings and to be fair they did - controlling virtually all but a small percentage of the play - but their extraordinary ability to do so while remaining one scuffed pass away from disaster meant that the finger nails of the home fans would not go on unbitten for long stretches of this FA Cup 3rd Qualifying Round replay.

The pattern of the game was set out early on with Mossley looking to attack their opponent’s goal at every available opportunity (to wildly varying degrees of success) and the Lincolnshire side focussed on attacking anything that moved; a tactic which saw them come into contact with the ball occasionally and the ankles of men in white shirts slightly more often. Within the first five minutes alone there were three challenges perpetrated by the visitors that were all worthy a booking yet it was only the third one which received the requisite punishment - a three for one special offer that went on all night and one taken advantage of by far too many players.

For all the possession Mossley had in the opening period they didn’t really create a lot of chances with it. There were plenty of crosses and cut backs from wide positions but rarely did they lead to Railway’s goal being troubled. Only twice in the first half hour was keeper Mario Ziccardi was called upon to rescue his side; the first time to deny Ben Richardson after the right back had made one of his trademark darts into the box and the second to keep out a fizzing shot from the edge of the area by Mike Fish. The closest Mossley actually came to taking the lead was when the ball grazed the cross bar after a low cross from Steve Settle ricocheted off the knee of a defender.

As the half wore on Lincoln began to get a little more adventurous and their back line started to sit a little closer to the halfway line than their own 18 yard line. Given how leaden footed their defence was compared to Mossley’s forward line it looked and was soon proven to be a bad idea. A simple through ball gave Mike Oates a free run on goal and he calmly placed the ball past Ziccardi to give the home side the lead. Although looking at the video of the goal, it seems it needed the help of one of the many and infamous Seel Park bumps to take it over the leg of a covering defender as well.

Over the remaining seven minutes of the half Lincoln abandoned their short lived positive approach to the game and returned to the more robust style they’d ‘entertained’ the crowd with previously. I truthfully don’t think the game went on for more than twenty seconds without the referee calling a halt to proceedings for a foul. The match would restart, a group of players would cluster round the ball before one player in a white shirt was suddenly two foot higher (and more horizontal) than everyone else, at which point the whistle would blow, Mossley were given a free-kick and the cycle would begin again. Not even the interval brought an end to the combativeness as the walk back to the changing rooms took three minutes longer than expected due to the first players to leave the pitch having what is commonly described as an ‘altercation in the tunnel.’

Still, things were looking good for Mossley. One up at the break against a team that already looked dead on their feet and one that seemed highly unlikely to finish the match with eleven players on the pitch. And if you think that’s a cue for the next paragraph to begin with the word however, you’re not wrong.

However something happened while the teams were devouring orange segments, drinking energy boosting coloured water or whatever it is players do between halves. Mossley returned to the field of play looking a shadow of the side they were fifteen minutes earlier - full of nerves, misplaced passes and leaden of boot - while Lincoln emerged from the changing rooms like they’d spent the interval channelling the gods of football.

I speak with all honesty when I say that if it wasn’t for the fact that their faces were the same you could have sworn they’d replaced their entire team with ringers, because for ten minutes after the restart they ran rings round us. If I hadn’t been fretting about what this turn of events could mean I might have been impressed with how Lincoln were playing. The fretting didn’t last long though because it was quickly superseded by a full blown collective panic attack when the visitors pulled level; another moment in which Mossley didn't cover themselves in any glory defensively. A failure to clear the ball, an opponent allowed time to put a cross into the area, an attacker winning a header in the six yard box, a man in acres of space at the back post... it was like a compilation of Mossley's recent worst bits - Now That's What I Call Schoolboy Defending Vol 10/11

Even though they had us on the proverbial ropes by the simple act of playing decent football, Lincoln couldn't help themselves from reverting back to the Bruce Lee impressions they were 'delighting' us with in the first half and one spectacularly unnecessary challenge outside their own box later, Mossley were presented with a free-kick from which they were able to retake the lead. Ben Richardson’s delivery was headed back across the face of the goal by Aaron Chalmers and Oates notched his second of the night from close range.

At this point I'd like to say that the wobbles stopped and the Lilywhites strode purposefully onto victory but they didn't. It took a fantastic save from Peter Collinge and the flag of an assistant referee to stop Lincoln drawing level again though the butterflies in the pits of the supporters’ stomachs were settled when the Lilywhites gave their lead a cushion. And a smart little goal it was too with Lee Blackshaw flicking the ball past Ziccardi with the back of his heel. A moment I believe the word 'deft' was invented for.

With time ebbing away and the game slipping from them with every passing second, Lincoln once again set about their opponents legs with great gusto and I'm sure they'll be disappointed that, thanks to the increasing leniency of the referee, they didn't take their card count into double figures. Still, a total of seven yellow cards isn't something to be sniffed at for ninety minutes work.

”Hiiiiiii-ya!” And the referee reaches for his pocket once again...
Three became four for Mossley in the closing stages of the match when Mark Connor bundled the ball over the line following more good work from Blackshaw and that was it: the last hurrah on what eventually turned out to be good night for the majority of people situated within Seel Park.

If you can blank out the jittery period following the interval, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful about this result and performance. First of all there’s the win and the cheque in the post from the FA that comes with it. Secondly, and even taking into account the lower league status of the opposition, this was arguably our best display at Seel Park this season. It wasn’t fantastic but it was a class above the other showings I’ve seen in terms of spirit and ideas.

And if you think that the last paragraph is a little too upbeat for this blog then I should balance it out by saying that the defence looks frighteningly porous at times. Until we start to look a bit more solid we run a real risk of being punished heavily by good sides for the laxness we seem unable to shake.

Still, I'm sure there'll be plenty of time in the comings weeks and months to grumble about the whys and woes - defensive or otherwise – that come with following this club. Till then though it would be silly not to take time out and admire the accomplishment of reaching the 4th Qualifying Round of the FA Cup for the first time in over two decades.

Better still is the fact that there's no pressure in the next round. Our opponents Darlington are three leagues above us and expected to win.; we’re just there to make up the numbers and give one or two of their supporters a 'look how far we've fallen' anecdote. It's a terrible footballing cliché but I'm just going to enjoy the match and keep my fingers crossed that we manage to give them a scare or two before bowing gracefully out of the competition.

Hoping for more than that would be silly... wouldn't it? ;-)

Lincoln Moorlands Railway 1 - 1 Mossley

2010-10-11T14:51:00.002+01:00

To go or not to go: that is the question that now arises for me in regards to the replay that resulted from Mossley’s recent excursion to Lincolnshire in the FA Cup.

The hesitancy in deciding whether or not to lumber Seel Park with my presence for the re-match stems on this occasion though from a sense of selflessness rather than the other reasons which has seen me miss or come close to not attending games since April.

You see, I think that I may be some kind of a jinx. I’ve seen five of the six home games Mossley have played so far this season and witnessed them win only once. And even in that solitary (and slightly fortuitous) victory against Garforth, the performances on the pitch have left something to be desired; there has been very little to be effusive about. However, in that one home match I didn’t attend not only did Mossley win (an FA Cup match too), they did so by a margin of more than one goal and put in what was apparently a good performance to boot.

So you can see my quandary. Do I go and run the risk of putting the kiss of death on proceedings or do I stay at home for the greater good? Decisions, decisions, decisons.

It’s a choice I wouldn’t be forced to make though if Mossley could put away their chances as the report on the Lincoln game, along with numerous comments elsewhere, suggests that it was the latest instalment of the Lilywhites ‘Cow’s Bum and Banjo’ show. On the plus side (and it’s a major plus) we didn’t lose and we appeared to have at least made our opponents keeper work up a bit of a sweat – something I sadly haven’t seen at Seel Park on anything other than warm days this season.

Should we win the replay (and that’s nowhere close to being a foregone conclusion by any stretch of the imagination – it is Mossley we’re talking about after all) we’ll be welcoming Darlington to Seel Park for the 4th Qualifying Round; a team who it’s fair to say haven’t had the best of times recently.

We’ve played Darlington once before and that was in the First Round Proper of the same competition 27 long, long, “good grief do I feel old” years ago when we lost a five goal thriller to the Quakers at Feethams. That is to say they scored five goals and were rather thrilled about it.

And such is the weird way that peculiar coincidences are thrown up, after not playing Darlington for almost three decades we’ll be facing them twice in the space of five days should Lincoln allow us to overcome them; three times if the fixture goes to a replay because the youth team are due to take on the Yorkshire side’s youngsters in the FA Youth Cup on the following Wednesday.

Alas, it all depends on which Mossley turns up for the replay on Tuesday against Lincoln: the ‘good’ Mossley or the ‘bad’ Mossley. The only thing we know for certain is that with our current lights it’s going to be hard to tell.

Kidsgrove Athletic 1 - 4 Mossley

2010-10-09T11:44:00.003+01:00

Time constraints and the fact that I'm still in a state of shock at this result means this is going to brief... okay, own up! Which one of you just cheered?

My state of disbelief in the 4-1 scoreline comes purely through the fact that a mere three days earlier, the game which lead to this replay suggested that five goals and a scintillating performance from one of the teams taking part would be the second to last thing to happen. The last thing of course being David Icke invading the pitch on the back of an aluminium foil covered giraffe and interrupting the game for five minutes while the theme tune to 80's Saturday morning kids show Starfleet played over the p.a. system.

That's not to say that the not particularly loveable crackpot didn't take to the field of play while riding African wildlife, I wasn't there so I don't know for sure. It certainly isn't mentioned in the only report on the game that exists anywhere in the known universe so I think it's safe to assume that it didn't as it probably would have been worthy of a sentence or two.

Accompanying the £2000 in prize money for emerging victorious from this brush with an old NWCFL foe is the chance to take on another familiar opponent in the next round of the FA Trophy: Shepshed Dynamo, who we still have to thank for our Unibond First Division title in 2006.

If you cast your minds back you'll remember that we practically imploded in the tail end of that season and if it hadn't been for Dynamo beating Fleetwood and Kendal in the final week we wouldn't have stumbled over the finishing line in the championship race. Actually a better metaphor is that we toppled over well before the finish and Shepshed were kind enough to move the line to behind where we fell. So thank them graciously when we turn up at Butthole Lane next week for their part in enabling us to win a bit of silverware.

Mossley 1 - 1 Kidsgrove Athletic

2010-10-04T15:42:00.011+01:00

If you’re somebody who visits this blog in the seemingly forlorn hope of one day reading a match report in which the word count doesn’t approach four figures, then today is the one you’ve been waiting for.

I’d like to be able to bring you (or indeed inflict on you if you only come here for the sole purpose of having your sensibilities offended) my usual outpouring of meandering flimflammery but the nature of this match makes it impossible to do just that. I mean, how do you write about an FA Trophy game in which next to nothing happened? As it turns out, the answer to that question is ‘with great difficulty’.

The opening period was as dire a half of football as I’ve seen in quite some time. Nothing of any note happened at all apart from the wind blowing, the birds chirruping and everybody very, very slowly getting 45 minutes older. A small frog also appeared on the edge of the pitch midway through the half and the fact that this has got a mention and a photograph should be a good indicator as to just how bad things were.

A frog. Probably as bored as us too.
Eight minutes after the interval the tedium was finally broken when not only was there a shot, it was on target and it hit the back of the net too. By this stage of proceedings I don’t think supporters would have cared which side scored as long it meant something had happened but thankfully for the home fans it came in Mossley’s favour; Mike Oates dinking the ball over a couple of players and the line with what the tabloids would probably call a ‘cheeky little lob.’ And should you so wish, you can watch it over and over again:

Moments later Connor Hampson scuffed a shot wide when it looked easier to score and with it came the end of the brief flurry of excitement, the game quickly returning to its pre-goal dreariness. And, oh, how the Lilywhite supporters wish it had remained that way as with 15 minutes of the match to go and Kidsgrove posing no threat at all, Mossley’s philanthropic nature gifted them an equaliser. That’s far nicer than saying it was yet another almighty cock-up isn’t it?

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before but it began with a ball that should have been cleared but wasn’t. It was then rolled gently to the feet of an opposing player and after being given a guard of honour by the Mossley defenders on way to into the box, he had the time to measure and then hit a low shot past Peter Collinge which pulled his side level.

There was a half-chance or two for Mossley in what time there was remaining but the unwanted prospect of a Tuesday replay loomed larger with every misplaced pass and dead end run. And that’s what the final whistle brought: the chance to re-watch both sides bore one another again in midweek, only this time at a ground 30 miles closer to the equator.

I’d go into further details about how we played, the good and bad points, etc., but that would mean spending even more time dwelling on a game and I need to put out of my head as soon as humanly possible. Especially if I want the nightmares to stop.

Mossley 2 - 1 Garforth Town

2010-10-02T13:29:00.002+01:00

I can recall precisely what time Garforth opened the scoring because a mere 15 seconds earlier I'd looked at my watch, turned to the person next to me and said, "22 minutes gone and absolutely nothing has happened."

Now if I was paranoid (or more paranoid than I actually am) I'd probably believe that the goal came through this inadvisable tempting of fate but in truth it was down to yet more sloppy defending from Mossley. For the umpteenth time already in the five games I've seen this season an opposing player was allowed the freedom to run towards the Mossley box and ping a cross over to an unmarked team mate. On this occasion it was Chris Howarth who was the beneficiary of this sadly repetitious event and he hammered the ball into the net to register what will probably be the easiest goal he'll score all season.

If the lesson of not to leave players unmarked in the box hadn't been learnt over the course of the past month, it was hardly likely that it would over the course of the following five minutes so it didn't come as a surprise when the same set of circumstances transpired once more. What was a surprise though is how Garforth didn't double their lead as with an entire goal to aim at a visiting attacker, whose identity will forever remain a mystery to me, shot directly at the one Mossley player on the line. If the ball had nestled in the back of the net I'm practically certain that Garforth would have claimed all three points but it's incidents like these which become turning points.

Not that there was any evidence it would prove to be a game changing moment as Mossley's attacks were just as blunt and scarce as they have been in all the league matches at Seel Park this season. The Garforth goalkeeper did produce a spectacularly acrobatic save to prevent a Steve Settle shot from going off for a goal kick but in truth there was only one side that looked like scoring. And here's a hint: it wasn't Mossley.

And so it proved on the stroke of half-time when Town centre half Tom Marron produced a goal out of nothing. There appeared to be no danger at all but with his back to goal he hooked the ball over both his shoulder and the keeper and into the net. Unfortunately for him it was his own keeper and his own net but that shouldn't take anything away from the sheer quality of the effort because I don't think any player in the world could replicate it.

The Evo-Stik website has the o.g. as being scored by Andy Villerman and that does a great disservice to Marron so I hope he's pleased to know that there's at least one corner of the world wide web that will correctly salute him for his commitment to the Mossley cause. It's a good job there was no one round to capture it on film though, eh Tom? Oh, that's right...

Some of the best things in life are sudden and unexpected (apart from being hit by a bus of course) so the fact Mossley went off at the interval on level terms was a rather pleasing thing. And it got even more pleasing five minutes after the restart when Lee Blackshaw fired a 25 yard daisy cutter past keeper Lee Kelsey after being gifted the ball by a Garforth defender.

In the 15 minutes following the go-ahead goal Mossley produced some of the best football I've seen them play this season. Not only was there some invention and intelligent passing and movement, it was finally married to some efforts on target - ones which actually had to make the keeper work to prevent the ball from hitting the net.

One effort was hacked off the line and Kelsey had to make a great save to stop Steve Settle putting Mossley further in front before producing an even better block to prevent... erm, actually I don't know who it was he stopped from putting their name on the score sheet because the shot came from one of the dark spots dotted around the pitch. That's right, a month into the season and there are 33 miners a mile underground in Chile who still have better lighting than we do. I don't want to keep bleating on about it (really, I don't) but the current set-up of the lights could cause us problems if they're not altered.

This period of Mossley pressure didn't last long but at least it was enough to constitute a spell which is vast improvement on the glimpses we've otherwise been getting.

In their attempts to get back on level terms Garforth abandoned the patient passing approach they'd been employing all evening and began to launch the ball as quickly as possible up the pitch. It's not pretty to watch but it's effective, especially when used against a somewhat shaky defence. It led to a few heart in mouth moments for the supporters as they noticed the odd player or two in a yellow shirt ghosting into the box unmarked but Mossley survived these late scrapes unscathed in order to secure/hang on for (delete as appropriate to the levels of rose tint in your glasses) the win.

And lets make no bones about it – the win is all that mattered. It would have been nice to have claimed the victory through playing breathtaking football but given our league position, even at this early stage of the season, getting points in any way, shape or form was paramount.

To be fair though the performance was better than the ones I've seen so far at Seel Park this season. However, despite this improvement there are still aspects of our game that any side with a half decent attack or regimented midfield will have a field day with unless we finally get around to addressing them. The them in question being the sloppy passing, the slack marking, etcetera, etcetera, and so forth.

I'll ignore those worries for the time being though (at least until the next game) and I'm just going to be happy that I've eventually got to witness Mossley win a game again. After all, you have to enjoy these small pleasures in life while you can.

While reading the above you may have noticed the omission of something that every other report on the game have mentioned. There's a reason for that. Well two actually. No, three. The first is that it had no bearing on the game whatsoever. Second of all, I've no wish to get involved with assisting Simon Clifford in his publicity stunt. Finally, and I know it may well contradict point number two, I'm umming and ahhing as to whether or not to do a separate post on the subject

Dunston UTS 1 - 2 Mossley

2010-09-28T12:04:00.001+01:00

Because of a lack of time and anything interesting to say I’ll keep this short: we won and a report on the game can be found here.

Mossley’s reward for overcoming their Northern League opponents, besides the rather handy £4000 in prize money, is yet another away fixture in the 3rd Qualifying Round of the FA Cup - a trip eastwards to face NCEL side Lincoln Moorlands Railway who sound more like a heritage train line than a football team. Despite being one of the lowest ranked teams left in the competition they aren’t to be taken too lightly having already dispatched a side of equal standing to Mossley in the pyramid to in an earlier round.

Not that we’d ever under estimate them given Mossley’s long and often miserable history in supposed ‘easier’ ties. As always it will be eyes closed, fingers crossed and hope for the best. On the terraces at least... all being well eyes will be open out on the pitch during the match.

Mossley 1 - 2 Trafford

2010-09-25T13:03:00.003+01:00

One of the best things about no longer doing the official reports is that I can take my time to compose my thoughts about a game; I'm able to (as Lloyd Grossman used to say) deliberate, cogitate and digest what transpired before offering my considered, if unwanted, opinion. However, as I write, five days after this particular match, I can't come to any conclusion other than that we really were quite a bit poor.

I'll begin though with the positive points that Mossley can take from the game which rather conveniently leads us to the start of the match. With just over ten minutes gone a punched clearance from Trafford keeper Tom Read made its way towards Sam Hare. Following a nice piece of ball control the former Stockport County player... well, you can see for yourself:

Actually, I don't think I should have pluralised the word point in the previous paragraph because after Hare's 25-yard strike it was pretty much downhill for the Lilywhites. Nine minutes and one good save from Jon McIlwaine later, Trafford were level. Mossley's aeons old problem of not being able to defend corners properly allowing centre half Nia Bayunu the time and space just outside the six yard to turn and fire the loose ball into the net.

The closest the Lilywhites came to taking the lead (or even looking like scoring) again came in the 35th minute when Danny Egan headed a Ben Richardson cross against the outside of a post. At the time it looked like a sitter had been missed and there was much muted grumbling, but on second viewing it wasn't the easy chance it had initially appeared due to both the angle and a defender positioned between him and the goal.

There's no question that Mossley should have had a penalty in the opening minute of the second period after Read rugby tackled Mike Fish but, for reasons unknown to everyone other than himself, the referee thought otherwise. And waved away along with the penalty was Mossley's hopes of a place in the next round of the competition. There was the odd bit of pressure on the visitors goal but nothing that raised the expectation levels of the home supporters on the terraces. The report on the Trafford website says that Read performed heroics to keep Mossley at bay but other than a few weak attempts that he didn't even have to dive for (they were more back passes than shots) it's a description that defies some logic.

And if we're going to call bending over occasionally to deal with a bobbling ball heroic, then it's leaves us without a suitable noun to describe his opposite numbers performance at the other end of the pitch because if it hadn't been for some very, very good saves by McIlwaine then the margin of defeat could have been embarrassing.

He didn't have much chance with the goal that put Trafford ahead - a penalty from Scott Barlow after Mossley had decided to end Callum Byrne's lengthy and disturbingly easy run into the penalty area by sending him illegally crashing to the floor. After that though he was the only person who seemed to stand between a one goal defeat and one that made the score Skelmersdale reached in the previous game look narrow.

Over the course of the match, there was some debate as to what the excuse would be if when we lost. In the end it was narrowed down to three possibilities:

"It was an experimental side..." In some respect this is true but in another respect it isn't. The non-experimental side we've employed in league games, with the continual changes of personnel and formation, still resembles a work-in-progress so there isn't much difference between the two. Other than that they both show we're still a long way from turning base metal into something yellow and
shiny.
"Saving players for Saturday's game in case they get injured..." Which is an idea I can along with. At least I could if it wasn't for the fact that our more consistent and senior players (the ones you'd most expect to be missing for this very reason) were out on the pitch for the entire 90 minutes. The persons rested in case of knocks and niggles were the ones who've been in and out of the side and ones in need of finding some form.
"It's a meaningless cup..." It isn't a meaningless cup. It's the League Cup - the biggest competition we have a reasonably realistic chance of doing well in. Okay, there's not much in it for us financially but a win in any competition breeds confidence and that's something that seems to be in short supply. Of course there's a more important game coming up next in terms of money but we now go into it on the back of two straight defeats and with morale not exactly high. And what if we lose that? Suddenly the League Cup doesn't look quite as meaningless.

Finally, the floodlights. I know I've mentioned them before but they are a problem that requires sorting out. Seriously, something needs doing because there shouldn't be so many dark patches all over the pitch. All it needs is one assistant referee to say that he's having trouble seeing events close to the opposite touchline (and that's not as far fetched as you might think because it's already difficult to make out faces and the numbers on shirts at that distance) and whole can of worms is likely to be opened, starting with a failure to fulfil a fixture. Something is wrong when you can't see who's about to come on as a substitute but you can see the supporter on the terraces behind exploring the contents of his nose with a finger.

Then again, if this performance and the others I've seen this season are what the home fans can expect at Seel Park over the course of the next seven months I'd have no complaints if the dark patches got a lot bigger.

Hopefully though we can bounce back from this defeat and return from our trip to the north east with a place in the next round of the FA Cup secured and a couple of thousand pounds worth of prize money ready to be banked.

Hopefully...

Mossley 1 - 4 Skelmersdale United

2010-09-20T18:54:00.007+01:00

4:40pm It's 1-1 and the home supporters are hoping that Mossley can hang on for what would be a creditable draw against a good but not spectacular Skelmersdale side.

4:45pm It's 4-1 to a good but not spectacular Skelmersdale side and the home supporters are hoping that their opponents tally won't reach double figures over the course of the five minutes of added on time.

And that is a true story: a possible point turned into what could have been an even heavier defeat within the space of a few minutes. Say what you like about watching Mossley but it's never ever dull. Often miserable yes, but never boring.

There's an argument that a one-all draw would have been a fairer result but you're not going to read a tale of hard done to and unlucky Mossley here. Despite the close nature of the game, the better side won (they were certainly the side in the ascendency over the final third of the match) and though the winning margin may have been a touch flattering, there can be few complaints about it given Mossley's complicity in allowing Skelmersdale to achieve it.

The game wasn’t exactly overflowing with goalmouth action and the few chances that did present themselves were cheaply spurned. A perfect example of which being the first “he should have scored” moment of the match when after being put clean through on goal Mike Coates could only shoot straight at Radcliffe’s onrushing keeper. And he did the same again when presented with a similar gilt edged opportunity in the opening minute of the second period.

In between these “what if?” moments both sides managed to find the back of the net once; the first team to do so being the visitors. There appeared to be little danger for Mossley and as long-time supporters know, that's when the Lilywhites are at their most vulnerable. For a reason that I'm sure will forever go unexplained, Andy Watson gave the ball away under no pressure to Chris Almond who by way of thanks sped past his gift giver and curled an admittedly impressive shot around Peter Collinge and into the goal.

It could have been two moments after the restart as the home side got a severe case of the wobbles but three minutes later they were level. The perseverance of Ben Richardson and the patience of Mike Fish in biding his time to take a shot combined to allow the latter to stroke home an equaliser. A goal caught for posterity below:

At other points in the opening half Ben Richardson fired a free-kick narrowly wide of an upright and Karl O’Donnell did something similar at the opposite end of the pitch following a superb move involving Paul Byrne and constantly dangerous Paul Woolcott.

Over the past few seasons we’ve become used to Mossley starting the second period of games in a subdued manner – as if someone had spiked the half-time oranges with elephant tranquillisers – so it was quite the pleasant surprise to see the Lilywhites come out after the interval like men possessed. Skelmersdale were run ragged as a couple of chances came and went (including the previously mentioned ‘head in hander’ from Oates) in quick succession but sadly the fire in Mossley’s bellies burned brightly for only five minutes, at which point Skelmersdale slowly began to look like the side most likely to bank the three points if destiny had decreed that there was going to be a winner.

It took a fantastic one handed stop from Peter Collinge to stop Almond putting the visitors ahead in the 55th minute and as Mossley's midfield, which had been fading in and out of existence all afternoon, started to spend most of the time in its invisible phase, the ball began to spend a lot more time in the home sides half of the pitch.

The possession Skelmersdale were enjoying wasn’t being turned into too many shots on goal but there was plenty of alarm in the worrying sight of a red shirt or three loitering unmarked in the box at corners and free-kicks. Therefore it came as no surprise when the two problems of a disappearing midfield and slack marking combined to cause an even bigger problem in the 85th minute. The ball was given away in midfield and carried towards the box with little resistance. This was then followed by a slapdash attempt at clearing a cross which allowed Steve Akrigg, one of two United players stood on their own on the edge of the six yard to knock the loose ball home.

One minute later. Another ball given away, another player allowed to run towards goal unimpeded, another player picking the ball up with no-one breathing down his neck and another goal.

Two minutes after that... well, you can see for yourself below:

Of course the last two goals did come in part due to Mossley 'pushing up' in search of an equaliser but they were, the third especially, still avoidable.

I'm not going to do a lengthy inquest on this game because I want to keep my promise of not being too critical this early into the season. Plus I'd only for the most part be repeating the criticisms I put in the report for the Radcliffe game as the same problems still exist. And they’re problems that need addressing and quickly too if we don't want to get dragged into a fight at the foot of the table this early into a new campaign.

It wasn’t all bad though. We managed a few more shots at target than in the previous two home games (note the word at and not on) but Fish’s well taken leveller apart, not one was hit from inside the Skelmersdale penalty area. And that’s not down to something that’s going to be cured simply by a change of luck.

Oh yes, luck. I've heard a few comments that it's the lack of it which is to blame for our points tally currently standing at five out of a possible eighteen. I can accept a chance occurrence accounting for a slipped point here or there but when your six games into a new league campaign and already bemoaned fortune (or rather the lack of it) in four of them, then maybe there are problems fate won’t fix.

It's still early days though and if the occasional flourishes of promise that have been glimpsed in the home league games are nurtured, there's plenty to look forward to. Conversely, well... I don't need to go there do I?

Maybe a victory over Trafford in the League Cup can get us back on track again? Or at the very least somewhere in the vicinity of the track. But then given the recent history between the two sides the only things that are definite are some less than harmonious interactions between supporters and players and the writers cramp the referee will get.

Not to worry though. Even if it comes to the worst and the football is of the kind that makes grown men cry in despair, it's still going to be a better alternative to stopping at home and watching Holby City.

AFC Fylde 0 - 2 Mossley

2010-09-17T18:29:00.002+01:00

A 2 - 0 win in a league fixture! Away from home too! I know... wow!

I'm sorry if the incredulity contained in the opening paragraph seems somewhat unsupportive for a supporter but show me a Mossley fan who seriously thought we'd go to Fylde and win and I'll show you someone desperately trying to ignore the fact their leg wear has caught aflame.

This is what constitutes a shock. Mossley, whose league form hasn't been great, beating a side (quite convincingly too by all accounts) who've splashed a considerable sum of cash around on players during the summer might not be a result of David slaying Goliath proportions, but it is a signal to other teams that we may not be quite the pushovers our pre-game league position suggested.

However, the big question is was it a one-off? That one moment in many where fortune chooses to smile on you or is it really the start of better things? The next match should give a pointer to which of the two options is the correct one, especially as it's Skelmersdale who'll be our opponents: a bogey side if ever there was one. Although lets be honest, if you were blindfolded and stuck a pin in the club index of the Non-League Directory, 99 times out of a 100 you'd hit a team who were a bogey side for the Lilywhites.

Back to the game though and the official Mossley report on the game is situated here. The Fylde version of events can be found via this link while you can read the nice things their supporters are saying about the Lilywhites display on their forum here.

Onwards and upwards. Or onwards and downwards... you never can tell with this club.

Glossop North End 0 - 4 Mossley

2010-09-13T12:49:00.003+01:00

Other than to criticise the parentage of match officials or pass judgement on their ocular failings, it's rare that the views of opposing supporters on the same game are ever alike.

Looking at various message boards, twitter feeds and reports in the aftermath of this fixture - as well as listening to the thoughts of people who actually ventured to Surrey Street – it appears that this match was the catalyst for one of those rare occurrences where there's a unanimous consensus about this fixture. The agreement being that Glossop were absolutely atrocious.

With not being in attendance myself, it’s impossible to say just how much of North End’s poor showing was down to Mossley just being good. However, no matter how deep the depths of awfulness Glossop plumbed were, the Lilywhites still had to put the ball in the back of the net (although the home side did do it for them to open the scoring for the afternoon). That they did so four times was not only impressive but something of a shock as well to someone who has only seen them manage two shots on target in the 180 minutes of football he’s witnessed so far this season.

Is it a result that will have the knock-on effect of finally kick-starting a faltering league campaign? Time, as always, will tell but with both cash splashing Fylde and bogey side Skelmersdale to come over the course of the next six days, I’m not getting my hopes up too much – if at all.

Anyhoo, if you want to know more about Mossley’s cup victory then reports are available here, here and here. Photos on the other hand can be viewed by following this link and this one
.
Besides £3,000 in prize money Mossley’s reward for knocking four unanswered goals past Stuart Williams is all the joy of a trip to the North East to face Dunston UTS of the Northern League. Smile though, at least it’s not Esh Winning.

Mossley 1 - 1 Radcliffe Borough

2010-09-10T18:24:00.003+01:00

Hold on to your hats readers because I'm about to drop a bombshell. This posting will not contain second hand information of what transpired in a Mossley game but an authentic eye-witness account because I actually attended a game.

You’ve had to pull yourself up off the floor with that little revelation haven’t you?

Yes, for only the second time since April I decided to take up a spot on the terraces at a fixture involving the Lilywhites and for a considerable amount (okay, almost all) of the time I spent standing on those concrete steps I was rueing the wisdom of choosing to do so.

If that last sentence doesn’t provide you with a clue as to what the general tone of the following report may be, it’s at this point, before I get into the meat and bones of this post, that I should perhaps proffer a word of warning. If you're one of those supporters who gets upset at the merest hint of a criticism aimed anywhere within the vicinity of Mossley or annoyed that someone has a view that's not coloured by some rose tinted eye furniture then stop reading now.

Seriously, do something else. Follow this link and watch some cutesy-wutesy kittens because you're not going to like what follows.

I'll wait while you go...

...

...

...

Okay, if you're still here don't say I didn't warn you.

I'm unimpressed. Utterly so. And not just about the football either but it's that which I'll start with.

As Smiffy says in his excellent and much more succinct take on the game on Six Tame Sides, the reports of an improved Mossley performance at Warrington three days earlier weren’t exactly being backed up by everyone who attended that game. However, whether that performance had been given a sugar coating or not, it was still enough to induce a bit of hope in those of us who’d given Cantilever Park a wide berth that we were about to see a better display from the men in white shirts than what we previously may have witnessed; a bit of promise that suggested our league campaign and rise up the table was about to begin.

Sigh.

If you were a Radcliffe fan the game got off to a fantastic start. Not so much if you were watching from a Mossley perspective and watching is the operative word when it comes to describing the Lilywhites part in Borough's third minute opener.

While I admit that I can occasionally be prone to the odd touch of exaggeration, I can say here without a word of a lie that not one player in a white shirt moved as a free-kick was swung into the Mossley box. And motionless they remained as Shaun Connor ran through a crowded area to volley the dropping ball past Peter Collinge; the sound of the small cluster of visiting supporters celebrating drowned out by the noise made by a 100+ pairs of eyes blinking in disbelief at what they’d witnessed.

With their defence and midfield dropping deeper towards their own penalty area after the goal, Radcliffe possibly thought that Mossley were going to come at them all guns blazing in response to the early bruising they’d been dealt. Instead we came at them with a water pistol containing no water.

Mossley’s answer to going behind was non-existent. Barring the occasional glimpse of some nice passing in and around the vicinity of the halfway line, the home team were no threat at all. As a supporter there aren’t many sights in a football match more dispiriting than seeing your team losing and relying on some insanely hopeful pot shots, from a distance no less than 30 yards from goal, to rescue the situation.

Credit is due in part to some impressive work in midfield and defence from the visitors but the home team were hardly helping themselves by showing nothing in the way of invention or nous. With no width at all to the side everything was being channelled down the middle of the pitch to where a lone forward was being marked out of the game by two centre halves. That’s right: at home to a lower table side and needing a win, we were playing with one man upfront. Actually scratch that because there were times we had a no man attack; the designated forward having drifted back past the midfielders in search of a ball he was seeing precious little of.

To be fair I’m sure that the actual formation we were using was 4-3-3 (or a 4-3-2-1) but for the most part it was 4-5 players in the centre circle-1 and the game became stuck in a loop: (1) A nice passing triangle from Mossley on the halfway line, (2) possession surrendered cheaply, (3) Radcliffe clear the danger easily, (4) Go to (1).

And it continued like that well into the second period. Even the introduction of another forward couldn’t instil a bit of variety to Mossley’s approach play, although Radcliffe’s keeper Nick Culkin was finally called on to make a save. It may have been from one of his defenders mishit clearances but we're going to count it as a shot on target for Mossley. Then out of nothing the home side were level with a goal richly deserving of being scored in a better game. Substitute Mike Fish received the ball on the corner of the Radcliffe box and on let fly on the half-volley with a looping effort which dropped over Culkin and into the net.

If Michael Oates hadn't scooped the ball over the crossbar moments later, after the Borough keeper had spilled a speculative effort from distance directly into his path, then there'd have been a goodly number of delightfully flabbergasted and happy people within Seel Park. Instead they just became frustrated as the promise of a great comeback was derailed by going back again to funnelling every attack we had down the middle of the pitch.

This was good news for Radcliffe who were starting to look a little ragged for the first time, but now they could get back to doing what they’d done so well for the first hour and a bit of the game: stifling Mossley and forcing them into errors before attempting to launch a counter attack. And with this approach they nearly snatched a victory in the dying embers of the game; Peter Collinge doing extremely well to tip a swerving, dipping, something else ending in -ing shot from a Borough substitute to safety.

Even though we probably had the lion’s share of possession over the course of the ninety minutes, it definitely feels like that it was a fortunate point won rather than two lost thanks to one moment of individual brilliance.

As my attendance at games has been sparse this season, the only frame of reference I have to judge this Mossley performance against is their display at home to Bamber Bridge last month and it’s a tad concerning because I couldn’t see any improvement whatsoever. If anything there were a few more causes for alarm to add to the list. Being determined though to live up to my promise not to be too critical so early into the new campaign, I shall forego expanding on that inventory of worries for now in the hope that what’s happening is still nothing more than teething trouble for a new team and management.

Having a winger on the pitch could improve things immeasurably. Although to be fair we might be using them now – it’s just that nobody can pick them out at night, which leads me on to something else I wasn’t overly enamoured with: the new floodlights.

I don't know what it was like on the Main Stand side of the ground but from the Hanover Street side it was difficult at times to make out who the players were on the opposite side of the pitch. Not only because of the dark patches in various areas but because of the shadows the lighting caused – leaving players on occasions looking like silhouettes (at some point over the next few days there'll hopefully be a few photos to illustrate some of these points).

I’ve no doubt that this is due to the way each of the individual lights has been angled (a number of them seem to be positioned almost directly downwards rather than out across the playing surface) and if this is indeed the case it should be an easy enough problem to rectify. If it isn’t the case then… well, it doesn’t really bear thinking about.

Finally (there is actually a finally), music was played over the PA system when Mossley scored. To borrow some internet terminology all the kids seem to be using: WTF?

Goal music is a tacky and embarrassing intrusion on the game and there’s a reason why we’ve ridiculed its use at Curzon Ashton for years: because it’s pitiable and not because we were trying to disguise feelings of jealousy at not having it ourselves. Hopefully it’s just a one-off. If it isn’t then our lack of an effective attack could have a silver lining after all.

Fingers crossed for better (and brighter) things soon or else more postings like this are going to make people think of me as the quite the grumpy pants.

Warrington Town 1 - 1 Mossley

2010-09-07T17:41:00.003+01:00

National Non-League Day and I as a non-league fan wasn't at a non-league game. The shame of it, eh?

I had given some consideration to turning up at the Tameside Stadium to see hosts Curzon take on Witton Albion in the Evo-stik League. However, after mulling over the pros and cons of attending for, ooooh, about six seconds, I decided to stop at home and try to finish off Assassin's Creed II on the X-Box while listening to Tameside Radio's Saturday Sports Show.

And what a wise decision that turned out to be as not only did I finally manage to finish wandering around renaissance Italy on my games console, I also avoided a match of unbearable awfulness on Ashton Moss; 90 minutes of soul destroying football that has been lovingly documented for the ages at Beat The First Man.

Not so wise was my choice of programme to listen to on the wireless as for a sports show there was precious little in the way of sport on it. I'm not going to be too critical about it here as the lack of updates from any local games other than the ones involving Stalybridge and Hyde may just have been a one-off. Yes, there were half-time mini-reports from the Curzon and Mossley matches but there were no full-time updates and if you wanted to know the results of any game not involving Hyde or 'Bridge you had to wait till 5:45pm (an hour after the scheduled finish of the matches) to hear them.

Like I say though, it will require another listen to see if this is normal practise and I can't say it's something I'm particularly looking forward to. The thought of possibly spending another tortuous eight minutes listening to two Wet Wet Wet songs played back to back in the hope of hearing a scoreline sends quite a chill shuddering through the bones.

Oh! Mossley's match - I very nearly forgot. It was a one all draw which means the Lilywhites finally get their first point of the season and you can read about the game here. Be warned though as it does contain another tale of fluffed chances and points dropped.

Mossley 2 - 0 Witton Albion

2010-09-04T14:24:00.005+01:00

The first goals of the new season and, thanks to not conceding any, it's Mossley's first victory of the season too.

First of all apologies for the late appearance of this little links post which was down to me completely forgetting about the game. And it's that little confession which should give you a clue to the fact that I wasn't in attendance.

Instead I was four miles away at the Tameside Stadium where Curzon Ashton were facing Congleton in the FA Cup. Before the 'real supporter' brigade start to get on their high horses (not that I care much if they do as I find it rather amusing), I didn't see any of that match either. Well, there was the occasional glimpse of the ball passing the half way line but that's all I ever saw from my vantage point within the club's function room where I was attending a wedding reception. A lovely 'do' it was too.

Anyway, back to Mossley and if you wish to know what happened in order to put the team into the next round of the FA Cup then head to Mossleyweb and Six Tame Sides. You can also visit the Witton site to see what they say if you so desire. That said, given how long this has taken to appear you've probably been and visited those three places already.

So, as an alternative, why not hop along to Up For The Cup, a blog dedicated the early rounds of the FA Cup, where you'll find a very nice piece about the game.

Mossley's reward for this victory is a short (or depending on the traffic, horrendously long) trip to the High Peaks to face Glossop North End which, given our past meetings, has all the hallmarks of being a potential banana skin. What am I saying, you can probably remove the word potential from that last sentence.

I can't finish this piece though without mentioning the following posting by eligorton which appeared on the Witton Albion forum in the week leading up to the cup fixture with Mossley:

Important game this one. Should be a piece of p*ss,Mossley have had an awful start to the season,no goals scored and a shed full against.

Hubris - the gift that keeps on giving.

Clitheroe 5 - 0 Mossley

2010-08-26T00:26:00.004+01:00

I have to be truthful and say that I wasn't expecting Mossley to pick up a win at Clitheroe's Shawbridge ground. And to continue in this vein of honesty I’ve got to confess that I wasn't even expecting a draw either. That leaves only one option and yes, I'm afraid to say it but I was expecting us to lose. In my defence though I didn’t suspect we’d lose quite as badly as we appear to have done.

I appreciate that the above may well look like an exercise in being clever with the benefit of hindsight so I should probably try and describe the thought process which led me to such a conclusion. Unfortunately that’s not going to be easy because it would mean doing something I said I wouldn’t for a month or two. Allow me to explain.

While there were positive aspects about Mossley's performance on Saturday, there were a number of worries too and it’s these hmm's I mentioned in the Bamber Bridge report (or rather the hmm’s I made a point of not mentioning) that I thought a good Clitheroe side would be able to exploit. Of course, with not being at the game I have no idea at all if it was these concerns which ultimately led to the considerable pasting we received (or even if some new ‘hmm’s’ have cropped up) but the result is still the same: a heavy and somewhat embarrassing defeat.

All the grim details of Mossley’s night to forget are on Mossleyweb if you want to know precisely what happened.

The official report is in itself a cause for some alarm. Having done them for the previous three seasons I know that the recollection of events they contain will always tend to be a little rosier than yours, especially after a pretty dismal result and performance. Bad luck will have always played a part, along with poor officiating, and it will never be made to seem as bad as it may have appeared; it’s the literary equivalent of smearing of Vaseline on a camera lens to beautify something with a soft-focus. And if that's still the case this year you've got to wonder how bad things actually were when it contains comments such as:

Instead of rolling up their sleeves and showing the fighting spirit that had carried them through the latter half of last season ... they instead showed their collective bellies, rolled over and died

And

this result and the manner in which it came, with the talent available in the current squad, is quite simply unacceptable

I got slated and labelled not a true supporter when I classed a non-performance in a 4-1 defeat as 'bobbins' last year so goodness knows how uppity the same people are going to get this time round having read that.

Even though we’re just four days into the new season and already six points and sixteen goals behind the team at the top, there’s no point in panicking yet. It’s still a new side and a new management team so it’s going to take a bit more than 180 minutes of competitive football for them to find their feet.

Hopefully not that much more though!

Mossley 0 - 1 Bamber Bridge

2010-08-24T14:52:00.002+01:00

Having not been to any of the pre-season fixtures I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this opening match. The reports I've read on the friendlies have by and large been positive but one thing all seasoned football supporters know is that friendlies are no indication at all as to what may happen once the bread and butter matches begin.

I doubt there's a club anywhere that doesn't have one highly successful set of pre-season fixtures thats been followed by a league and cup campaign that wouldn't do the term 'woefully abject' justice. And lets face it, Mossley are a club that have had more than just the one.

I'm happy to say though that on this viewing I can see why people were enthused by the displays witnessed over the past month. It's wasn't perfect – and given it's the first match of the season I wasn't expecting it to be – but there was plenty on show to be optimistic about. Conversely however there were things, as C+C Music Factory once put it, to make you go hmmm.

My first thought about Mossley as the two teams lined up for the still pointless pre-match handshaking was how small a side they are. I honestly can't remember a home starting XI at Seel Park as diminutive as this one. More Lilliputians than Lilywhites. And it's impossible to argue that this difference in stature between the two teams didn't play a part in the opening (and only) goal as Michael White barely had to get his feet off the ground to out jump the few defenders in the six yard box and head his side into the lead. The ball hit back of the net in the tenth minute and even at that early stage of the game it was a goal that had been coming.

The match was only four minutes old when Peter Collinge was forced into making an extremely good save to deny Kevin Towey, but the keeper could only stand and watch as Paul Lloyd poked the ball inches wide of the post and his own team mate Aaron Chalmers scrape the top of the crossbar with a wayward header.

There was the merest glimmer of a way back into the game for the home side when Mike Fish capitalised on Luke Atherton's inability to deal with a long ball, forcing Ben Hinchcliffe into making his first save of the afternoon. Sadly however it was to be a rare sighting of the Brig goal.

To say Mossley were under the cosh would be overstating things a little but the Preston based side looked like scoring every time they ventured forward. A reshuffle after half an hour though finally saw Mossley's defence start to... well, look like a defence (mainly due to the fact that there was finally someone on the left side of midfield to give the full back some protection) and they began to enjoy a little more possession than they'd previously been afforded.

Unfortunately though this extra time on the ball was culminating in nothing more than a few crosses into the box which were practice catches for Brig keeper. He was eventually made to work for his corn five minutes from the interval when two Bridge defenders produced a master class in how not to clear your lines when under pressure and played the ball into the path of Steve Settle. His first time shot was probably a little closer to Hinchcliffe than he'd have like it to have been but the keeper still had to produce a fantastic stop to prevent it from levelling the score.

Whether it was thorough the visitors deciding to sit back or Mossley finally hitting their stride, after the break the Lilywhites dominated the lions share of the possession. That's no hyperbole either, they controlled the game and in doing so put together some very nice moves. The down side is that as attractive as their style of play was, it was mostly for nought as time and again it fell apart in the final third of the pitch. A combination of a packed defence and taking an extra touch or three when was none was needed ensured that Hinchcliffe wasn't forced into more heroics. He probably should have been called on to do something, even if it only to pick the ball out of the net, when Andy Watson was left with a free header on the edge of the six yard box but the centre half could only send the ball looping high over the cross bar.

Mossley's cause wasn't being helped by their seeming reluctance to use the width of the pitch as most of their attacking play was being directed down the middle and straight into a barricade of red shirts. The introduction of Osebi Abadaki added a much needed bit of flair and invention into the Lilywhites attacks and the ball finally began to work it's way towards the huge gaps down both flanks.

Unfortunately though the problems with differences in height came into play again as anything other than a low cutback from the byline was comfortably dealt with by the Brig defence. So despite spending almost the entirety of the last half hour of the match with the ball at their feet in the oppositions half of the pitch, all Mossley had to show for their efforts were two shots which drifted past the post from 83rd minute substitute Michael Oates.

If you wish to see some of those misses - near and not so near - then you can by clicking play on the video below. And yes, widescreen! Ooooo...

If football was based on all things being fair then both sides would have had a point each from this game and both would have probably been reasonably happy with it. Neither side deserved to win in the same way neither deserved to lose but lose we did and that's the game; sometimes you don't get what's merited. On the other hand though I'm sure – nay, certain - that over the coming months there'll be more than a few occasions where we'll get more than we should have done out of the game. It's why we love and hate the sport in equal measure.

Looking at Mossley with an optimistic frame of mind, there's plenty to be hopeful about. As a reasonably new side they're only going to get better (please don't let that sentence come back and haunt me) as the team begin to gel and the starting XI becomes more settled. The fact that the team were always looking for the opportunity to play along the floor instead of aimlessly lumping it in the general direction of the opposing goalkeeper bodes well too.

Viewing things from a not quite rose-tinted perspective can wait a while though. It's the first match of a new season, with a new management team and a lot of new players so there are going to be teething troubles and it would be churlish to highlight them now. If they're still making us go hmmm in a few months then some thinking aloud may be done but until then (if there is to be a then) it's time to sit or stand back and watch what could be the beginning of something special.

Or it might not... I don't want to tempt fate this early into a new season!

Gearing Up & Slowing Down

2010-08-21T11:03:00.003+01:00

Ladies and gentlemen. Madames et monsieurs. Damen und herren... it's that time of the year again: the start of a new season.

Unless of course that is you support a club in something other than the Evo-Stik or Zamaretto league's because your season began at the very least a week ago. If so the optimism a fresh campaign brings may have already been replaced by the gnawing sensation in the pit of your stomach that your weekends are continually going to be ruined over the coming months by a squad of players whose sole ambition in football is to rise to a level where they're only described as inept.

But this isn't a posting that's going to be about hopes and dreams. It's about something else entirely.

The few remaining regular visitors to this dark corner of the world wide web won’t have failed to notice the lack of reports during the recent spell of friendlies and I'm sorry to say it's a situation that's not going to change much over the course of the coming season. There will still be the odd musings on what went on at matches, just not as many of them as there has been in the past.

I started the blog because writing about Mossley and the football world the club inhabited was fun. For a multitude of reasons though - none being any greater than the other - that is no longer the case. Some of them I'll explain, others I won't.

Detailing the on and, at times, off pitch events at Seel Park has become a chore and looking back over what I've written during the course of the past six to twelve months it shows: as my apathy has grown, the standard of my writing (not that I'm big-headed enough to believe it was great in the first place) has dropped. It could turn out that the decision to cut back on postings may get the creative juices flowing once more, making the staid run through of games which have cluttered the blog lately a thing of the past. Or it may not. Only the future knows for certain.

I appreciate that some of you may be thinking that's a sorry excuse for not doing match reports but there are other factors involved as well as I've previously mentioned. Such as it's hard to write about games when you're not there to see them and this season I won't be at as many of them as I've been in the past.

For years Mossley AFC (and I'm fully aware of how sad this confession may – nay, will – make me sound) has always seemed to come first in my life. Anything I did would be based around whether or not the team was playing and if there was a chance I could make it to the game. It’s time though other things started to take a priority, not least my health which I've neglected on far too many occasions over the last few years in the pursuit of seeing a game of football. A President's Cup fixture on a cold winter's night is no longer worth the three or four days of acute back pain it has previously caused.

And those are just a couple of the reasons why. As I said there earlier there are more but I have neither the time nor indeed the inclination to share them here.

Maybe taking a step back will allow me to rediscover my love of the game and, more importantly, watching Mossley. I want to recapture the excitement I once had when I stood on the terraces; I want to go back to enjoying matches again and maybe something as simple as being nothing more than a fan, rather than a real supporter, will allow me to do just that.

Like I said though the blog will continue to tick over with the odd report on home games, as well as the occasional video or two (it's not being mothballed completely) so there's still a reason for popping by occasionally. Maybe just not quite as often as you may have done in the past!

Anyhoo, I'll end by going off on a complete tangent and wishing the players and management of the Lilywhites a successful season. If and when a full and normal service resumes on here I hope it's to help document one of those all too rare successful periods in Mossley's history.

Mossley 1 - 2 FC United of Manchester

2010-08-16T14:37:00.003+01:00

Another pre-season friendly – the last one in fact – and another game I didn’t attend which means another post consisting of links to the web pages of people who did.

First of all the Mossley view on proceedings and off to Mossleyweb and Six Tame Sides you must head for those. If you wish to read the review of what transpired from the opposition’s perspective, one click here will lead you to it.

And that's the phoney war out of the way with. Three wins, two draws and two defeats which isn't too bad a record for a pre-season campaign. As every level-headed football supporter knows though, the results of these matches mean the diddly of squat when it comes to giving indications on how the actual coming league campaign may play out. So it's time for a sharp intake of breath, some hoping for the best and to eight months of ups and downs we now go.

Finally though, after its lackadaisical approach to the friendlies, will this blog’s normal match reporting service be resumed for the first game of the season this coming Saturday? I’ve absolutely no idea at the moment and that’s the very honest truth.

Mossley 3 - 2 Hyde

2010-08-10T10:59:00.001+01:00

I know it’s a week late (consider this a sneak preview of what to expect with the blog this coming season) but if you’ve been on tenterhooks as to how Mossley got on against Hyde FC then prepare to unhook those tenters.

Because I’m settling rather comfortably into the role of not being ‘a real supporter’, my presence at this game was similar to all the other fixtures Mossley have played this pre-season: elsewhere; a situation which means that once again I can provide you with nothing more than a series of links that will take you to the thoughts and opinions of people who were bothered enough to turn up. So, and without further ado, click here, here and here.

What can we read into the result? Well, because it’s pre-season absolutely nothing as these fixtures are the epitome of pointlessness when it comes to judging what may or may not happen over the coming eight or so months. However, that hasn’t stopped some Chorley fans declaring a pre-season victory over Hyde a sign that they’re going to win the league. If such a victory is an omen (don’t laugh, they may be right!) it looks like we could be adding silver polish to the clubs shopping list come April time.

And yes, it does appear those Magpie fans are being serious as it’s the latest in a long list of comments on that forum which suggest Chorley are going to fill the ‘arrogant and annoying supporters’ vacuum left in the wake of Halifax’s promotion to the Evo-Stik Premier. Which is awfully nice of them.

That Was The Week That Was

2010-08-02T11:34:00.001+01:00

Apologies for the appropriation of a familiar title to headline this post but the alternative - a lengthy roll call of team names - would be quite cumbersome.

Having not attended any of the friendly games this season it’s somewhat difficult to write about what happened in those matches other than to just recite the score line. The internet being what it is though, I can do a run through of Mossley AFC’s on-field activities over the past week via links to pages written by people who don’t share my current apathy towards football and actually saw the games in question.

July 24th saw Welsh Premier League side Bala Town make their first (and given that they lost, possibly last) trip to Seel Park. Details of Mossley’s 3-1 win can be read about here, photographs of the game are on Six Tame Sides and if you look at Bala’s official site you’ll find it wasn’t worth bothering.

20 miles away on the same day Mossley’s shiny new reserve team were playing at Bacup Borough where they lost 2-0 to their Vodkat League hosts. Should you wish to know more about what happened, follow this link and scroll down the page a bit. If you’re reading this a good while after the post date that’s under the main heading, scroll down the page a lot. And if you’re reading this a few months from now, be prepared for there being nothing there at all.

Last Tuesday saw Droylsden make the short trip across Tameside and just as they did in pre-season last year, they left Seel Park with a win, albeit a much narrower one. Reports on the 1-0 reversal are here and here. But not here.

Saturday saw Mossley pick up their first trophy of the season (he said hopeful of more) at Hurst Cross in the shape of the Willow Wood Hospice Cup. A collection of words about the Lilywhites’ penalty shout out victory can be viewed on Mossleyweb and Six Tame Sides, while video footage of various incidents in the game lives here.

The reserves meanwhile were registering a 2-0 win at Cheadle Town and details of this fixture are available for your perusal on a Town supporter’s blog.

The next instalment of Mossley’s pre-season campaign is a meeting with Hyde this coming Tuesday (03/08) at Seel Park. I won’t be there to see what transpires (apathy it turns out is fantastically addictive) but I’m sure someone will and hopefully there’ll be a link or two to their thoughts and opinions on here some time later in the week.

48

2010-07-23T23:42:00.002+01:00

With the new season less than a month away, the last entry on the blog about the old one:

If you can't see the video, follow this link.

Mossley 3 - 2 East Manchester

2010-07-23T22:54:00.003+01:00

Or its alternative title: The Shortest Ever Posting On Mossley80

I didn't go so I've no idea what happened. However, the team sheet and goalscorers are here, photographs are at this location.

And that's it for this update. Move along now... nothing more to see here.

Mossley 2 - 2 Oldham Athletic

2010-07-22T12:30:00.001+01:00

If you're reading this it's highly likely that you're doing so in the hope of finding out what went on in Mossley's first pre-season friendly ahead of the 2010/11 campaign.

I'm sorry to say though that if you've arrived seeking such information then you're going to be disappointed as I didn't attend the aforementioned game. So if you wish to know something more than the team playing in white shirts scored the same amount of goals as the team which took to the field in blue tops, this isn't the place.

Fortunately there was somebody there to record proceedings for posterity and you can read about the first half here and the second period at this location.

Actually it wasn't even Mossley's first friendly either. The premiere outing for the new look Lilywhites took place last Saturday behind closed doors in Gorton. Like a special forces operation in one of the world's trouble spots, the first anyone knew about it was long after it was over and the score of Mossley 4 Springhead 0 was announced. For further details (though not much more) there's a brief overview of this game on Mossleyweb.

Next up for Mossley are amateur side East Manchester this evening and Bala Town of the Welsh Premier League on Saturday. There won't be reports for those games on here as I won't be at the ground to watch them but hopefully there'll be links to the views of someone who was.

30 Years Ago: Part Five

2010-06-09T15:05:00.009+01:00

Win or lose the team’s return home was always going to be big occasion. And despite Maycock’s late goal ensuring it was the latter of the two options, it’s hard to imagine the celebrations being any better had the Lilywhites returned with the actual trophy rather than just the cardboard one John Salter was brandishing after being handed it by a fan.

Like the day that preceded it, what happened on the morning after the final will probably remain forever etched in the memory of those who were there. Cramped into the small market ground in order to welcome the team home appeared to be the entire population of the town. It sounds like a terrible cliché but people were hanging from lampposts and sitting on the roofs of nearby buildings just to catch a glimpse of what was happening on the makeshift stage.

While it’s feasible that Mossley could still make another Wembley final one day, it’s highly unlikely that the return home would be as memorable or as well attended as it was back in 1980. There are a multitude of reasons why but as social commentary is not my speciality I’m going to refrain from listing my thoughts as to why this would be the case. Suffice to say it would involve word ‘community’ prominently.

The clippings below detail the events of that warm Sunday morning back in May thirty years ago and also include a few other photographs from the Wembley trip that didn’t make part four. Who knows, there may be a face or two you recognise?

The clipping below was accompanied by the following caption: 'Mossley's visit to Wembley inspired 16 year old David Leech, a pupil at West Hill School, Stalybridge, to sketch this crowd scene...'
And that’s it for this short yet somehow drawn out (and little read) look back at Mossley's trip to Wembley three decades ago. I hope these postings over the past month and a bit have brought back some happy memories for those of you who were around at the time and if so, I'm glad they were able to instil that warm glow nostalgia always brings.

Hopefully the next thirty years update in a few months time will do the same. That's right, we're not finished with 1980 just yet.

30 Years Ago: Part Four

2010-05-17T10:00:00.009+01:00

This is it - the 17th of May, 2010. Thirty years ago to the day that Mossley the town virtually emptied and Mossley the team took to the pitch at Wembley Stadium for the 1980 FA Trophy final.

It's actually quite frightening to think that three decades have passed since we did battle with Dagenham for the right to climb those 39 steps and hold the trophy aloft. Not only because the events of the day are still as fresh in the memory as they were back then, but because it really makes you feel your age as well!

Mossley's appearance in the final meant that the town's carnival, due to take place on the same day, had to be postponed for a week but it didn't stop the locals from taking to the streets as they would have done had it gone ahead. Instead of lining the roads to watch the procession of floats and bands though, almost everyone to a man, woman and child converged on Mossley station or the market ground: a sea of black and white waiting to be carried to London on one of the many specially chartered train services or the seemingly never ending line of coaches.

My journey south was on one of the crowded trains (a trip that seemed to pass in the blink of an eye) and along with the walk to the stadium in the Mossley jacket my mum had made for me, the atmosphere both inside and outside the ground, the hairs on the neck raising rendition of Abide With Me, the teams emerging from the tunnel and other moments far too numerous to mention... they're experiences that will live with me until either the day I die. Or when senility finally takes over - whichever comes first really.

Yes, that's me in the top left photograph in my little red Mossley jacket. The other photos were taken by my dad as the teams made their way onto the pitch.

In fact the only void in my memories of the day is the match itself. I remember Ian Smith equalising, or rather the roar as he did so, and a few other incidents but the combination of being tiny and the stadium's infamously poor sight lines meant that my view of the match was often obscured by the people around us.

As we all know too well though the final proved to be a game too far for the Lilywhites - not that they didn't make a damn good go of achieving a league and cup double. And that's not some rose-tinted nostalgia talking, as the reports below say we were genuinely unlucky not to come away from the old Empire Stadium with more than just losers medals and memories.

If you only have the time or desire to read one of the following scanned cuttings, I suggest you choose the first one - 'Walking tall from defeat' - as it's the one that was published in the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter and, as a consequence, a bit more emotive than the others.

That's not to say the rest (reports taken from the national tabloids) aren't worth reading because they are and all have some kind words to say about the Lilywhites.

If I'd been older I'm sure the defeat would have hit me harder than it did but I went home in just as happy a mood as I'd arrived in. In fact there weren't that many overly sad faces in the carriages as we made the journey north. Maybe it was because everyone thought we'd get the chance to do it again the following season? Sadly we didn't, a defeat at Bangor City in quarter-finals of the competition ending our chances of making it to Wembley for a second successive season.

Even now, thirty years on, there's still the hope burning in some fans that we'll get the chance to take to the pitch at the national stadium again. And though it's a situation that's unlikely to happen given the way the non-league game is set-up these days, it is what dreams are for.

The fifth and final part of this look back will be online soon and detail the teams homecoming along with more words and pictures about the Final weekend.

30 Years Ago: Part Three

2010-05-15T11:20:00.002+01:00

With the anniversary of the 1980 FA Trophy final drawing ever nearer, I've been back to the scrap books I've kept from that particular period and digitised a few more clippings. What follows are cuttings relating to the build-up to the match.

As always, just click on the images to be taken to a larger, more readable version:

The majority of them are taken from the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter but there are a couple from the national press, including the following one which published in the News of the World on the Sunday before the match:

Interestingly, even if it is only to me, the photograph that accompanies the above article could have been one of me.

A call went around school (I was a pupil at St Joseph's at the time) asking if there was anyone who was going to the final. My hand went up, along with those belonging to a few others, and we were taken out of class and round to the ground where we were decked in hats, scarves and flags for the press photographer. Those pictures though were never used and a fleeting brush with fame passed me by.

Over the course of the next seven days I'll hopefully be putting some more clippings up on the blog relating to the game itself and the events that surrounded both it and the homecoming. There are quite a few pictures so there's a chance you'll see somebody you know looking thirty years younger.

The previous two parts of this series can be found here and here.

Glossop North End 3 - 1 Padiham

2010-05-14T23:24:00.004+01:00

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?

Pylons And Horizons

2010-05-11T16:00:00.002+01:00

Having only just grown accustomed to not seeing Mossley's floodlights dominate the skyline after their well documented losing battle with the winter weather, it looks like I'm going to have to start getting used to another view.

Looking up towards top Mossley when I got home from work this afternoon, I noticed something a bit different about the western horizon:

Thanks to the numerous fund raising events and the grateful donations of many, many good people, the club is (warning - bad pun ahead) literally beginning to put the dark days behind them as the pylons for the new lights are now up.

It's not the greatest photograph in the world I'll readily admit but hopefully there'll be some better pictures to follow when time and the weather conditions allow.

New Mills 0 - 0 Squires Gate

2010-05-09T14:00:00.003+01:00

And so ends a week of diminishing returns.

What began with a mesmeric meeting between New Mills and Newcastle and took a near vertical descent in quality with the Vodkat League Cup Final, finished back in the High Peak with New Mills and Squires Gate playing out a game of football so spectacularly dull that it almost cured my insomnia. Never before has a 0-0 scoreline so accurately reflected a match.

It would be remiss of me not to mention that both sides had a couple of half chances but for the most part the game was as lifeless as the back benches in the House of Lords. Although I'd wager that you'd see more dribbling there in the space of ninety minutes than you would have done at this game.

The only incident that sticks in the mind (and unfortunately my handkerchief and coat) is the sudden pre-match nose bleed I had. And it comes to something when your nose literally bursting in a fountain of blood is not only the highlight of the day but more fun than the match too.

In brief then, the past week of viewing NWCFL games goes as follows: excellent game -> bad game -> worse ga... Zzzzzzz!

It's a sequence which doesn't exactly bode well for the next game the 'ever desperate for a game of football' Mossley supporters will be taking in on Monday night. That said though, the masochist in me is keen to see just how bad things possibly could get.

I know, careful what you wish for...

Abbey Hey 3 - 0 Winsford United

2010-05-09T13:34:00.003+01:00

Following the delights of last weekends top of the NWCFL table clash between New Mills and Newcastle, the Vodkat League Cup Final held at Curzon Ashton gave the same small but intrepid band of Mossley supporters the chance to sample the kind of fare that was on offer at the opposite end of the division.

Would we be treated to some similarly sparkling football or be witness to something else entirely?

Well it turned out to be something else and not a good something else either as we went from the sublime to the sub-standard in the space of five days. I'm not saying it was bad but... no, it was bad. Very bad.

Actually I don't know why I'm surprised at the poor nature of the match given the type of season both sides were having. Winsford were sitting fourth from bottom of the league while their opponents, Abbey Hey, were actually rock bottom and playing their first game since being condemned to relegation. Not exactly omens for a great game.

The warning signs that things would be slightly rubbish were increased when the sides were introduced to the guest of honour, Eric Tate, before kick-off. What do you mean you've never heard of him? It's the Eric Tate, the assistant manager at Northern League side Tow Law Town.

Yep, that's right, the V.I.P. for the Vodkat League Cup Final was the second in command - not the actual manager but the assistant - of a mid-table club in an equivalent league. Goodness knows who their back-up choice was should Mr Tate not have been able to make the game. Armthorpe Welfare's coach driver? The window cleaner at Bishop Auckland?

And all this was done to a backdrop of wrong announcements and terrible mispronunciations over the p.a. system which, as you can imagine, (despite being par for the course at the Tameside Stadium) really added to the prestige of the event.

Although I had gone to the match with the intention of being neutral, my support swung behind Abbey Hey for two reasons. The first being the presence in their team of three ex-Mossley players (John-Paul Lewis, Gareth Wager - who was probably man of the match - and Matthew Kemp) and the second reason because they were the only side who attempted to play some football on the night.

The first half was memorable only for the one goal scored in it. A rare outbreak (i.e. the only bit) of quality football opened up the Winsford defence and gave Abbey Hey a lead which they carried into the interval without too much duress. No, scratch that, under no duress whatsoever.

The second period was marginally better, down purely to Abbey Hey raising their game a couple of notches rather than anything Winsford did, and two more very well worked goals gave the Gorton based side an unassailable lead.

I appreciate that it isn't a pleasant epithet to label a team with but Winsford were laughably bad. Being in the company of their fans though, we tried to keep our amusement in their on pitch endeavours in check but with fifteen minutes of the match remaining we couldn't stifle the giggles any more.

For the first time in the match United's number nine found himself goal side of the Abbey Hey defence and only the goalkeeper standing between him and the chance to give his team a glimmer of getting back into the game. With glory awaiting he swung his leg, missed the ball and almost kicked himself in the head before stumbling around like Norman Wisdom in search of Mr Grimsdale.

Winsford were by far and away the worst side I've seen on my travels this season and by some considerable distance. Admittedly they've had something of a fixture pile-up recently but if you can't raise your game just one iota for a cup final it's a sign that football isn't the sport for you.

Still, it was an entertaining match in a way (if for the wrong, wrong reasons) and marginally better than not only last seasons final, but the one seven years ago at Gigg Lane when when we beat Clitheroe 2 - 1 to lift the same trophy.

Maybe my lot in life is to never see a good final again? If it is I think that in the grand scheme of things it's something I can live with. I would though like to end the season with a reasonable entertaining game to carry me through the summer months so hopefully Saturday's fixture between New Mills and Squires Gate will do just that.

The emphasis of course being on the word 'hopefully'.

New Mills 1 - 1 Newcastle Town

2010-05-05T19:10:00.007+01:00

Just like last year, the early end to the Northern Premier League season saw a small group of Mossley supporters head off to strange pastures in search of football. And just like last year they ended up in the High Peak, or to be more specific New Mills, where the eponymous home town team were taking on Newcastle Town.

Ninety nine percent of the time a fixture at the tail end of the season involving the teams in first and second place would be must-see games full of tension and potential high drama. This though, thanks to Newcastle running away with the league and being crowned champions several weeks earlier, represented that other single percent where all that was at stake was pride.

However, the fact that there absolutely nothing riding on the outcome didn’t stop it from being a genuinely good game to watch from a neutrals perspective. Well, for the most part it was. There was a slump around the hour mark but compared to some of the games I’ve witnessed since August, particularly the Curzon-Colwyn Bay play-off four days earlier, this was ambrosia – the stuff the gods were fed with and not the rice pudding.

So, the game. Newcastle took an early lead when a sublime move up the pitch end in the most ridiculous of goals; the ball taking what seemed like a dozen deflections before ending up in the back of the net. The lead was a just reward for the Staffordshire sides great start to the match but they were pegged back when the assistant referee was kind enough to give the Millers a free-kick for a non-existent foul, from which Carlos Meakin headed them level.

New Mills' good fortune continued when their number five only received a caution for bringing down a player in the box. It was as blatant a red card offence as I've seen all season yet the referee (as is often the case at this time of year when their eyes are on holidays and not on filling out reports) only saw fit to issue a yellow. Newcastle's pre-interval misery was then completed by the penalty taker not only blasting his spot kick straight at keeper Liam Higginbotham (see, I know one players name) but knocking the rebound ten metres over the crossbar with the goal at his mercy.

The second half began with both sides piling forward in search of the goal that would put them in front but then came that aforementioned slump. It wasn't a gradual thing either - the quality of the game just went into a straight nose dive. Thankfully it picked up again towards the end and the Millers had Higginbotham to thank for keeping the scores level as the visitors bombarded his goal with shots.

I'm no fan of the keeper after the way he left Mossley last season but some of the saves he pulled off in the closing moments of this match were unbelievable. At times it seemed like 1 vs 11 and reminded me of the semi-final game in Shaolin Soccer (which, while I'm on the subject, is the best football film ever made):

Conclusions that can be drawn from the game? The over riding one is that I'm glad Newcastle will be in the Unibond, sorry - Evostik South next season. Seriously, they're that good a side and if they can keep their squad together I don't envy anybody playing them at all.

New Mills are a decent team too although not quite as formidable as Town and that's mostly down to their strike force who in this game posed all the threat and menace of a particularly wet lettuce leaf. Even the introduction of ex-Football League striker Simon Yeo didn't improve things any. At least not in terms of goal potential but he did up the quotient by falling over the ball. Twice.

Of course I'm basing the above opinion purely on the strength of one match but as it doesn't stop supposed 'experts' in the media, it's not going to stop me either.

Curzon Ashton 1 - 2 Colwyn Bay

2010-04-28T20:30:00.003+01:00

One thing you never expect as a spectator at a play-off is to see a good game. There's so much riding on the outcome, especially in one legged ties, that extreme caution tends to outweigh any notion of entertainment the teams involved may have.

Not on this occasion though as the meeting between Curzon Ashton and Colwyn Bay failed to live up to even the low expectations I had. It wasn't good - it really wasn't. I appreciate that the supporters of the two clubs involved will think differently but from a neutrals perspective it was a supreme test of patience.

As a Mossley fan I'm familiar with the clinical, and rather excellent, way Colwyn Bay have taken us apart over the past few seasons so the long ball tactics they employed in this game were quite a shock. Though not quite as big a shock as the fact they persisted with this tactic despite them getting no joy from it whatsoever. They posed so little threat that when Curzon took the lead just before the interval through Michael Norton it looked like game over already.

It was a view that didn't change until Bay made a double substitution midway through the second period and finally they began to play a bit of football. Within moments of doing so they were awarded a spot-kick when Phil Edgehill blocked the path of the ball with a raised arm (though naturally, like our penalty at the Tameside Stadium on Easter Monday, the Curzon website doesn't think it was one) and eleven minutes after Ian Sheridan had converted that, they got the winner; Lee Davey taking advantage of some very, very poor marking (see video below) to head the Welsh side into a play-off final against Lancaster City.

I can't believe I'm actually going to type this but the result was a touch unfair on Curzon as they were the best side on the night. However you won't find many of the large number of Mossley fans present at the game complaining too much at Bay snatching the win. Actually you won't have heard them saying anything due to the enormous grins they had on their faces.

If the video above isn't working or you want better quality, click here.

So while Colwyn Bay head off to Lancashire coast this weekend for a date with destiny, Curzon are left to ponder on another play-off defeat and what could possibly have been the last hurrah for the clubs most successful squad.

Stories of striker Norton departing for pastures new have been a staple of the non-league rumour mill for quite a few seasons now but this year they seem to have a lot more substance to them. Add to that gossip of other players moving on and the whispers of the purse strings being pulled a lot tighter, it could well be that next season at the Tameside Stadium is one of those that's described in future press releases as 'a rebuilding phase'.

Or as everyone else calls it, "not being as good as you were."

Mossley 4 - 1 Rossendale United

2010-04-25T18:45:00.003+01:00

This is it - the last one. The final match report of a season that has been, technically, shorter than most but felt an awful lot longer.

I'd like to go out with a spectacularly well written piece - something deep and meaningful that inspires both tears and smiles and leaves you yearning for the arrival of August - but as I've done no such things in the past, why start now?

What you'll get instead is a straight to-the-point report that will begin by stating both the season and John Flanagan's brief reign as Mossley manager came to an end with a victory, before going on to say that it guaranteed the Lilywhites seventh spot in the Unibond First Division North and condemned Rossendale to finishing a second successive campaign at the foot of the table.

As much as I'd like to avoid using the the cliché “a typical end of season affair” to describe the match it's hard not to as the game rarely developed a head of steam under the spring sunshine bathing Seel Park. Especially during a first half in which the two goals that gave Mossley the lead at the interval were the only moments of note in an otherwise lacklustre opening period.

The first goal arrived just after the half hour mark when a Dale defender tried to chest a right wing cross from Mike Fish into the arms of his goalkeeper Tom Brocklehurst. Unfortunately for him he completely misjudged just how far away the intended recipient was and only succeeded in cushioning the ball into the path of the inrushing Lee Blackshaw who converted the chance gifted to him.

Lee Blackshaw reels away after opening the scoring.
An error played a part in Mossley's second goal as well, however it shouldn't take anything away from the build-up which involved a blistering run over half the length of the pitch by Ben Richardson to get on to the end of of long, looping pass. His shot wasn't a particularly well struck one but the United keeper inexplicably let the ball pass through his hands as he bent to collect it, allowing the effort to roll slowly across the goal line and into the net.

Ben Richardson's shot prepares to slip through the grasp of the goalkeeper.
Thankfully for those watching from the terraces the second half had a bit more life to it – a situation aided in no small part by David Owens pulling a goal back for the visitors almost immediately after the restart. They came agonisingly close to levelling the scores too when Williams and ex-Mossley forward Ian Barker both hit the cross bar within the space of ten seconds.

It was a warning that finally woke Mossley from their post half-time slumber and Matty Kay restored the Lilywhites two goal advantage with a neat finish from ten yards. The goal was his 29th of the campaign but the 30th remained elusive despite Kay going desperately close on a number of occasions to registering it.

Matty Kay notches his 29th goal of the season.
Another goal was to come though and with five minutes remaining Mossley completed their scoring for the afternoon and the 2009/10 season when Chris McDonagh headed an inswinging free-kick beyond the dive of Brocklehurst.

Chris McDonagh (10) rounds off the afternoon's entertainment.
The post match news of Flanagan's resignation as manager due to work commitments undoubtedly took some of the shine off the win. But if the squad he leaves behind, and the spirit he's imbued them with, can remain intact over the summer there's no reason to believe that Mossley can't set their sights for a higher finish than seventh.

And that's it - a weary report to end a season of ups, downs and the odd moments of going round and round in circles.

Those of an eagle-eyed disposition will have noted that the above looks awfully like the official report and there's a reason for that: it is the official report, albeit with a new top and tail. I wish there could have been more differences but the time needed to do that has to be spent on other things - things which will hopefully be up on this very blog sometime in the near future. And you never know, they may even be worth reading.

Did I just hear you say, "there's first time for everything"?

Mossley 1 - 1 Skelmersdale United

2010-04-23T19:36:00.002+01:00

Hold onto your hats because time dictates that this is going to be a quick blast through of what happened in Mossley's last game using Hurst Cross as a home base.

There may be spelling mistakes, there may be grammatical errors, it's likely to be rubbish but at least it's not going to eat into your time like these reports usually do. So buckle in, deep breath and...

Whether it was tiredness or just being wary of a side who'd put five past them five days earlier, Mossley began the match in a cautious manner. It was a decision which allowed Skelmersdale to see plenty of the ball but not the goal as some strong defending from the forward line back meant that chances where like the supporters on the terraces - few and far between.

Up until the 40th minute it looked like a spectacularly awful attempt at trying to win a penalty by United's Birch would be the highlight of the opening period. However, with what can only be described as a jammy, flukey, mis-hit of a shot (though it could have been a cross or an attempt to control the ball given the peculiar shape he was pulling), Michael White ensured that the visitors would head into the interval with the lead after scuffing the ball into the net.

As the second half progressed Mossley started to grow more and more adventurous and thanks to Skelmersdale's Curzon Ashton impression (all blue kit - all long hoofs up the pitch) they began to enjoy a lot more possession. Chances weren't exactly coming thick but and fast but they were keeping the Skem players busy in their own penalty area.

There have been many times in Mossley's past when they've paid the price for not making the most of moments in a game when they're on top. Thankfully though this wasn't an occasion to be added to that list. A fantastically long goal mouth scramble (it was like the Can-Can with all the legs that were swinging away) came to an end with the ball being knocked out of play by one of the visitors. From the resulting corner Mike Fish supplied a superbly weighted cross onto the head of Andy Russell and a split-second later the ball was in the back of the net and the Lilywhites were on level terms.

Skelmersdale could - and indeed, should - have won the game in injury time. Phil Mooney found himself unmarked in the six yard box as his side countered a Mossley attack but he inexplicably headed the ball wide when doing just that seemed the most impossible thing to do.

It was a miss that kept the scores level though and neither side will argue that a point each wasn't the fairest outcome. And a point is effectively all Mossley need against Rossendale to finish the season in seventh place - a position which three months ago looked as unlikely as the General Election being a three horse race.

So farewell Hurst Cross. Thanks for the help and the memories and should our paths ever have to cross again, lets hope the circumstances for them doing so are better ones.

And... done!

Relax, breathe out and on to the last one!

Mossley 5 - 2 Garforth Town

2010-04-21T20:10:00.003+01:00

Having spent far too many years watching football I didn't think that there was anything left in the sport that could surprise me.

I've seen, and I'm sure you have too, astonishing comebacks, games thrown away when they were as good as won, fantastic goals, unforgettable howlers, results that defy logic and lots, lots more too numerous to detail here.

But in this match I was introduced to a genuinely new and pleasing experience: the sight of a Garforth team which was more interested in playing some very good football rather than seeing how many times they could whack the ball and their opponents up in the air.

Fixture involving Garforth have, for me anyway, always been ones that have been anticipated in the same way that someone on death row looks forward to the day after their last meal. Past meetings have included plenty of goals but there's always been an unsavoury edge too and as a consequence the football has come a distant second to... well, anti-football.

However, Simon Clifford's decision to hand over the managerial reigns while he concentrates on his business seems to have had a positive effect out on the pitch as the Yorkshire side are now playing something approaching the type of football that's been advertised on their website for years.

And what a pleasing thing it was to be able to watch too: excellent passing, superb off the ball movement - the sort of thing you really want to watch as a football fan. The best thing about it all though was that Mossley were just that little bit better than them at it.

Unlike the visitors Mossley had the cutting edge to compliment the quality of the build-up play and this was no more in evidence than over the course of an incredible first twelve minutes of the match. Not only did the Lilywhites take a 3rd minute lead through Mike Fish, they added a second and a third in quick succession thanks to Ben Richardson and Fish again.

Ben Richardson slots home the second goal of the night.

The incredibleness would have probably gone off the scale (that's if there was such a thing as an incredibleness scale) if Garforth had converted the golden opportunities that they were presented with in that initial 720 seconds as only a bad miss, a good save and goal line clearance stopped the score from being three apiece while the pies were still lukewarm.

The pace of the game didn't let up either after that initial spell of action as both sides launched attack after attack and chances came and went with all the regularity of a made up story in the Daily Express or Star.

Its been said many times before that there's no such thing as a comfy lead when Mossley are the team in front and this game was a prime example of why that's the case. With half-time approaching Mossley's lead went from three goals to just one as Garforth scored twice within a matter of minutes through Adam Clayton and Tom Greaves. And it must be said they were some top quality goals too that even the Mossley supporters had to acknowledge that with a gentle round of applause (as well as a touch of sarcasm just to balance things out).

They weren't to be the final say in a fantastic first-half though as Fish completed his hat-trick with a well taken goal that left the keeper stood stock still and allowed most of the supporters to begin breathing a little easier again.

Whenever there's a first half jam packed goals, it's often the case that the second period is a forty five minute boreathon. Thankfully though there are exceptions that disprove the rule and this was on of the few.

It retained the excitement the opening period had but both sides seemed to twig that defending a bit better might help their cause and though it remained end-to-end the gilt-edged chances were fewer. That said there was still plenty of them for both sides to have scored from and that they didn't was down to last-ditch blocks, good saves and hands-to-head misses - there should even have been a penalty or two too.

But there was one more goal to add to the six already scored and it went the home sides way. A good bit of close control from Andy Watson was complimented by an inch perfect through ball to Nathan Neequaye who with only the keeper to beat, unselfishly played a square pass to Matty Kay and Mossley's leading scorer added to his total for the season.

As someone said on the evening, the match was almost like a pre-season friendly. It was a game with nothing riding on it other than pride and with no pressure on them, two evenly matched sides just went for the win and it was great to watch.

To be honest, in much the same way the score line three days earlier at Skelmersdale was apparently unfair on Mossley (as I've been told by those who went) this one was harsh on Garforth. If it had finished a draw I don't think anyone could have complained about the result.

But Mossley did win and did so by blooding some of the younger players (John McIlwaine, Connor Hampson and Alex Byrne) and playing with a goalkeeper upfront for the final four minutes. Not a bad night if you can do that, win well and tighten your grip on a potential seventh place finish in the league.

Now to do the same again on Thursday and gain some quick revenge on Skelmersdale for the defeat at the weekend. Actually, recent defeat or not, beating Skem and applying a pin to their ever over inflated bubble of self-importance is always something to savour.

30 Years Ago: Part Two

2010-04-19T18:47:00.004+01:00

19/04/1980: Boston United 1 - 2 Mossley (2-3 agg)

A week after the one-all draw at Seel Park, Mossley and Boston met at the latters York Street Ground ground for the second leg of the FA Trophy semi-final.

Unlike the first leg I wasn't at this game. Instead I was at home listening to score updates on BBC Radio Manchester; updates which finished at half-time with Boston leading by one goal and leaving those not having travelled to Lincolnshire on tenterhooks.

I was having my tea (dinner if you're posh) when they finally gave out the final score and of all the things I remember from my childhood, this moment is one of the clearest: "Boston United 1 (pause from the announcer) Mossley 2." I've no idea what was said after that because my dad was cheering and I was stunned. In a happy way of course because even at that very early age I knew what the significance was of any team, especially one of Mossley's size, going to Wembley and I was going to get the opportunity to see them do it.

The first two images below contain the report on the game which was printed in the Mossley & Saddleworth Reporter. So if you want a breakdown of what happened on the day (including some peculiar half-time antics) just click on the pictures and you'll be taken to larger scans of the article. The third image is a cutting taken from one of the Sunday tabloids published the following day:

If you were at York Street on this particular day and want to share your memories of what happened, just click on the comments section below.

Coming soon - hopefully - the build-up to the Trophy Final.