Lincoln United 2 - 0 Mossley

“Why? Who are you?”

That was the response to the question, “Could you tell me the half-time score please?” I asked when I rang up Lincoln United at 3:50pm last Saturday. It wasn’t quite the answer I was expecting but I wasn’t surprised either. After all is the league where answers to the same question have ranged from, “Where are you from?” to a terse, “It hasn’t finished yet!”

There was never this problem enquiring after half-time and full-time scores over the phone in the NWCL and Unibond First Division which leads to me believe that along with a ground that meets minimum grading requirements, a surly phone answerer is pre-requisite for established Premier Division clubs.

Having said that, the person who answered my call at full-time was much more pleasant but one thing worse than being told the team you support has lost is someone cheerily telling you that the team you support has lost .

Yes, it was another defeat for Mossley; 2-0 this time at the hands, or rather feet, of Lincoln United who became the fourth team this season to do the league double over us.

By all accounts we had the better of the first half, even Lincoln’s manager going as far as saying so in the report that appeared in the Non-League Paper, but again our inability to stretch performances out appears to have cost us once more. The report on the game in the Oldham Chronicle continues in the same vein as it has done all season by saying that we were just darn unlucky. However only those that managed to get to Lincoln will be able to tell you whether that's just spin or not.

It now means that the points we’ve amassed during our ‘blip’ is a grand total of six out of a possible 42, with the defeat also having the effect of last week’s new found optimism brought about by the win at Frickley being knocked out of some of the supporters.

However there’s 48 points left to play for (ten of which are needed to catch up with the team currently occupying the coveted fifth bottom spot) so it isn’t quite Samaritan’s time yet. And if the hope in that last sentence seems forced, its because it was.

Whilst Mossley were in Lincolnshire playing league match number twenty six, I was in Derbyshire watching Glossop North End beat Colne by four goals to one in a thoroughly entertaining game; great goals, moments of high comedy, players cloaked with a seemingly permanent red mist - it had all, including a penalty miss that topped even Gavin Salmon’s ‘fondly’ remembered effort at Rocester in 2005. To be fair to the Glossop player who missed his spot kick though, it takes an enormous amount of skill to almost put the ball straight through the drive-in window of a KFC restaurant from 35 yards.

Hopefully the will break long enough for us to try and register a morale boosting win against Flixton in the Manchester Premier Cup on Tuesday ahead of the visit of table toppers Telford on Saturday.