Belper Town 1 - 1 Mossley

Unibond First Division North: 11th September 2004


More than anything this game was a case of 'after the Lord Mayor's Parade'. In a match where the conditions appeared to be in their favour (good weather , a perfect playing surface and coming off the back of an emphatic win) Mossley failed to impose their stylish brand of football on the game, and only the in-form presence of Lee Bracey between the posts stopped the Lilywhite's returning from Derbyshire pointless.

Belper kicked-off the game and, to use a cliche, the visitors were still in the changing room as for the next fifteen minutes Mossley barely got a touch of the ball. As has been the case in many previous games Mossley stood off their opponents allowing them time and space to advance on their goal but fortunately, on the few times Belper really threatened, Lee Bracey was able to keep them out.

Hopes that Mossley would be able to ride out this early spell of sustained pressure were obliterated in the fourteenth minute when Belper took the lead. It was a goal simple in its construction and one that will give the Mossley management nightmares as it was so easily avoidable. After a rare call into action the Belper keeper rolled the ball out to left-back Butler who carried the ball forward to the half-way line without encountering so much as a challenge. He in turn fed former Droylsden forward Wael Nazha (again given time and space) whose cross found Hudson alone in the box and his square ball fell to Ben Walker (apparently being man marked by the invisible man) who put the ball past Bracey and into the back of the Mossley net.

It was no more than Belper deserved and Mossley's response was less than encouraging. Instead of trying to play their way back into the game Mossley resorted to the long ball game and it proved to be just as fruitless as the last time it was used against Ossett. Mike and Downey were towered over by Belper's central defensive duo so any ball pumped up in the air to them was wasted and any potential spell of pressure gone in an instant. When the ball was played to their feet things looked more promising, but the few openings created barely troubled the home keeper, being both weak and directly at him. Only once during the first forty five minutes did an effort beat the keeper and, agonisingly for Rhodri Giggs, it narrowly beat the wrong side of the post too.

After the interval Mossley looked a bit sharper and started playing the ball around on the floor like we know they can do and, after both sides traded shots against the crossbar within a matter of seconds, the visitors started to dominate the game. The Nailers response to Mossley's pass and move play was pretty ham-fisted and they gave away a succession of free-kicks around their own half but, as seems to be the norm with Mossley, the set-pieces were rushed and came to nothing.

The equalizer just after the hour mark was a thing of beauty. A rare Belper foray was quickly countered when John Hore played a forty yard pass upfield to Chris Downey. Controlling the ball and beating his marker with the same touch he vollyed the ball past the keeper from just inside the area.

The goal added extra impetus to Mossley's attack and they should have taken the lead when Carl Rezai's cut back after a surge into the box flew across an unguarded goal, needing only the slightest of touches to deflect its path into the net. Sadly though the forwards were all on the back foot and the chance went begging. Despite losing Leon Mike with a suspected hamstring injury the reshuffling of Mossley's attack didn't seem to cause much disruption to the visitors play, but whilst they huffed and puffed carving out openings Belper always looked dangerous on the counter attack. Once again though Lee Bracey was on hand to keep the scoreline level, his best save coming in the last few minutes of the game when he denied both Belper and Walker a second goal with a low stop at his near post from point blank range.

Overall a point for each side was probably the fairest result. Both teams created the same number of openings but the only difference was that Belper made our keeper work whilst we gave the belper custodian an easier time of it despite the long spells of pressure we had in the second half. It's impossible to expect the team to perform at the level seen in the Rossendale game every match but the fact we can blow so hot and cold is a trifle worrying. Still, we recovered from a poor start and a draw is certainly not the end of the world, but the thought niggling about in the back of my head is that against the better sides in the league we're not going to be allowed chance to come back from slow starts. Something else to add to the 'to do' list I feel...

THE MATCH IN ONE WORD: Huffing

Mossley 6 - 4 Warrington Town

NWCFL: 16th August 2003

As I write this, almost 24 hours later, I still can't quite believe how difficult we made it for ourselves against Warrington. If yesterday was a taster of what we can expect over the course of the season then there's going to be a couple of hundred people suffering from severe nervous exhaustion come May.

As good a side as Warrington were, certainly a lot stronger than last seasons side, they're not as good as we allowed them to be. As it's the first game of the season though, I'm not going to lay into an area of the team that has been solid and consistent for many a month. It would be very easy, and extremely time consuming, to list the faults and mistakes made by the Mossley defence yesterday but everybody is allowed an off day and hopefully they've got this seasons out of their system.

The first game of the season is not the time for finger pointing and character assassinations from the terraces, what needs to be said will no doubt have been done so in the changing room by the management after the game. Another performance at the back like that against Trafford and Colne and it will be a cause for concern but for now, let's put it down to first day jitters. Of course if we'd lost I might not be so generous but we didn't and we can thank for that, in no small part, Tony Caroll.

The veteran striker has certainly responded to the competition there is now for forward positions at the club and yesterday was probably his best performance in a Mossley shirt. Playing with a 4-5-1 formation puts a lot of pressure on a sole forward but Carroll handled it excellently holding up the ball and drawing the midfield into the game. It was his pass at the edge of the box that set up Josh Howard to score Mossley's first after 10 minutes, Howard taking it past two defenders before slotting it into the bottom right hand corner. Nine minutes later Carroll was himself on the score sheet when he netted Russell Headley's left wing cross. His third came 12 minutes into the second half, once again coming from another cross only this time from Matty Taylor on the right.

Unfortunately for us though Warrington were scoring at the other end with alarming regularity as well. Apart from their first goal, which was a well taken piece of individual skill, the ease in which they scored was very concerning. On three occasions an opponent was allowed to head home unmarked from a Bermingham taken corner. It wouldn't be so bad if the player had managed to lose their marker but there was no marker to lose, even Emile Heskey couldn't have failed to score against us from a corner yesterday.

Just moments before Warrington's fourth Mossley had changed to a 4-4-2 formation and after the restart the team looked more comfortable as Warrington never really threatened again. The introduction of Jamie Almond gave the home side another attacking dimension on the right and it was his good work on the edge of the box that allowed Alan Bailey to grab a debut, and eventual game winning, goal. Until the change in formation Bailey had very much been a peripheral figure playing out of position on the right hand wing. With two men now playing up front Mossley were more of a threat, especially with Carroll and Bailey being fed from both wings by Almond and Headley and through the middle by Howard. It was a combination of these players that almost produced the goal of the game when Carroll hit the cross bar on the turn from the edge of the box. He wasn't to be denied moments later however, as more good work on the edge of the box allowed him to net his fourth and Mossley's sixth.

Overall a good start to the season but, perhaps, only one that can only be enjoyed in hindsight. We certainly looked a lot better when we moved to playing two up front so it will be interesting to see how we start against Trafford. Finally the world may be constantly changing, often for the better so it's also reassuring to see that referees are as reliably crap as ever. It might have been his only real blunder but it could have been a huge one with the score at 4-3 to Mossley. The decision to award an indirect free-kick instaed of a penalty when the full back brought down Tony Coyne in the box will forever remain a mystery. Who'd have thought that deliberately tripping someone up with only the keeper to beat was obstruction?

THE MATCH IN ONE WORD: Interesting.

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Salford City 0 - 1 Durham City

And so Mossley's season becomes even more congested.

The last traces of the recent spell of bad weather lingered long enough in the north east for the Lilywhites scheduled game at Newcastle Blue Star to be called off and increase the fixture pile-up they're facing in the final two months of the season.

To be honest though, even if Mossley had played out ninety minutes at Kingston Park you still wouldn't be reading about it on here.

For a multitude of reasons I'm not going to bother explaining here, unless it's a title decider or a very important cup match there's no way I'm going to be making my way up the A1 to Newcastle or Durham - be it this or any other season.

With this in mind I was expecting to sate my need to watch a game of football by making another trip to Lambeth Grove, this time to watch Woodley take on Lancaster. But thanks to the same wintery weather the blighted the chances of Mossley's game taking place, another possible destination arose: Salford City vs Durham City.

This fixture had been originally scheduled to take place on Durham's all weather surface but as we all know at Mossley, that wonder of modern technology doesn't quite live up to its title in the north east, so the match was switched at very short notice to Salford. And it showed.

All credit to the Ammies for agreeing to the swap but in doing so they must have lost out on a fair bit of income. There were no programmes, a lot of the regular supporters were missing and the whole thing had an air of a hastily arranged friendly.

It was a theme that permeated the first half too as both sides looked to be doing nothing more than going through the motions. Only once did the boredom deadlock look like being broken but a free header on the edge of the six yard box was dealt with comfortably by the Salford keeper.

Thankfully second half was a touch better, due in small part to the visitors taking the lead out of the blue in the 52nd minute. It may have been the only goal of the game but it was one worthy of winning better matches than this - Shaun Bell hitting a thirty yard shot that arrowed into the top corner of the net.

Like their match in midweek though against Colwyn Bay, going a goal behind seemed to transform Salford and they hammered away at Durham's defence like men possessed. And in further echoes of their previous game, the referee turned out to be their hardest opponent.

Not least when the man in the middle waved play on after Salford's centre forward had been Schumachered (Toni not Michael) by the Durham keeper on the edge of the box as he took the ball past him. It was an horrendous challenge and if something like that isn't going to get punished, the chances of being awarded a free-kick for handballs and tackles from behind in a similar area are going to be even more remote. And that's precisely what happened with Durham's less than comfortable looking back line getting a helping hand from the man in black.

To their credit though Salford continued to pound away but with time almost up Durham were awarded a very soft penalty and given the chance to make the score line a very flattering one.

The spot kick however was brilliantly saved though and the counter attack Salford launched from it which was brought to a shuddering halt on the halfway line when Durham's number six hacked Jamie Tandy to the ground. It was one of the most cynical tackles you're ever likely to see on a football field and rightly had the referee waving the red card before the offender had even picked himself up off the ground.

What followed can only be classed as a 'free for all' as both sets of players indulged in a prolonged bout of fisticuffs which, rather amazingly, ended with just one yellow card being shown. And with that the game ended.

The officials discuss the late meeting between chins and fists.

Unlike those who made what turned out to be an ultimately forlorn trip to the Archibald Stadium back in December, this was the first time I've seen Durham play this season, and while you shouldn't judge teams on the basis of one game, I wasn't particularly impressed with them.

For a side who are favourites for promotion there was little, if anything, that made them stand out from the rest of the teams in the league. The one noticeable trait they had is an unfortunate one that's also shared by another club in the league - Skelmersdale and their compunction to scream or fall over claiming a foul at every opportunity. It's unbefitting of any club let alone one hoping to claim a league title.

As for Salford - you've got to have some sympathy for them. Twice in the course of five days they finished a game without getting the point they at least deserved and look increasingly like being the side who'll be waving goodbye to the Unibond North as they fall through the trap door at the end of the season.

It's a shame really as this, their third different squad of the season actually looks like a side capable of doing something in the league. And more annoyingly Mossley still remain the only side they've beaten in the league.

Anyhoo, the weather forecast suggests that the game due to take place at Seel Park on Tuesday night will actually go ahead. How much of a game it will turn out to be though is another matter as a win for either Mossley or Retford will only add another unwanted match to the upcoming fixture chaos, So be prepared for a long night as both sides could be trying their best to avoid winning.