Mossley v Radcliffe Borough

... aaahh the luxury of a midweek day off (and the sun is out !).

After all the apparent promise of Saturday's performance at Warrington that I'd read about, I was looking forward to the season kick-starting last night. However - I talked to some others who'd gone to Warrington who'd seen a completely different game to that reported elsewhere ... so I watched with a now slightly more open mind.

Mossley got off to an awful start when Shaun Connor (brother of Mossley's Mark Connor) got behind a totally static Mossley "defence" to put Radcliffe 1-0 ahead after only 3 minutes - and after that Mossley struggled - and I mean struggled - to put anything coherent together. The "one touch build from deep" might look nice at times, but it just wasn't snappy enough, and by the time the penalty area was approached the Radcliffe defence had got itself well organised leaving space at a premium - too many final balls were going astray, and there was no width at all.

Still - looking at the subs bench, I wasn't overly worried - a couple of wide players who could get in behind the defence were sat there warming their butts ready for action ... however these two never made it onto the park and the second half was a continuation of the first. Then with 20 minutes to go Mike Fish conjured up a bit of "cheeky genius", curling the ball round ex-Man United keeper Nick Culkin to square the game and give hope for the final period - whilst Mossley upped the pressure late on, it just wasn't forceful and incisive enough and few - if any - clear-cut chances were created. Obviously not a night for wingers - in fact more for whingers when I got in the club afterwards !!

Some pictures from the game at

Mossley 1 Radcliffe Borough 1

Saturday sees the FA Cup returning to the fore with a trip to Glossop North End for what should be a keenly-contested local derby - let's hope last night's "formation" is kicked into touch - it just didn't look right at all to me (or ... maybe it was a ruse to confuse any Hillmen scouts who were "out and about" last night !).

Anyway - I'm off to do "stuff" - still learning how to make the most of this midweek day off - one definite jobbie though is the cooking of a nice Greek Stifado later today !!
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