Just like watching Mossley

10^th September 2011 – Curzon Ashton v Salford City

It was to be a strange day.

Prior to kick off, Curzon’s John Flanagan received his award for Evo-Stik Northern Premier League Manager of the Month for August. He deserved it. Curzon have made a fantastic start to the season and haven’t lost a game. In fact, all of the local Tameside teams have started well this season. All that is, except local rivals Mossley who have struggled at the bottom of the table. More on them later.

It was good to discover where Jimmy Ogoo had disappeared to since departing from Curzon at the end of last season.  It was nice to see him as he pootled around the pitch in his Salford City kit before the teams came out for the start of the match. Although his footballing skills never quite matched his enthusiasm, he was always something of a favourite with Curzon supporters.

Salford came out fighting and took the lead after 14 minutes due to a cock up (not literally) between Peter Collinge and Connor Hampson which resulted in an own goal.  Unfortunately this also resulted in Hampson being carted off injured and had to be replaced by Matty Kay.

Our flags are bigger than your flags

Rhodri Giggs, Salford’s player/manager had made a good start to the match but was subbed off with an injury after around 15 minutes.  He spent the remainder of the match hopping around in his technical area wearing an odd shorts and leggings combination.  I’ll just leave you for a second so you can fix that image in your mind..........

Despite looking promising pre-season, Lee Blackshaw was yet again consigned to the bench. All wasn’t lost for him though as it allowed him to scoff a pie as he sat on the sub’s bench watching the game.  Not sure if that’s part of his training schedule.

Mike Fish had obviously been playing FIFA 11 on his Playstation or something as he kept attempting an odd new move of using his shoulder rather than chesting the ball down. He failed miserably and even got carded for handball. Back to the drawing board for him.

Jimmy Holden, who is on loan to Curzon from FC United, really isn’t impressive to watch. He seems incapable of hanging on to the ball for more than four seconds and you can guarantee when he passes it, he will pass it backwards. Oddly enough, this is identical to the style of play the aforementioned Jimmy Ogoo favoured while he played for Curzon. Bizzarely, it appears that Jimmy is the new Jimmy.

Back to the game, and Curzon’s metaphorical bacon was saved when Matty Kay headed in an equaliser half way through the second half.   All credit to Salford City though, they played to win, and to be honest, Curzon were very lucky to get away with a draw.  It seems that Giggs’s spying mission the previous week had paid off.

To make matters worse, Twitter updates were showing that the Mossley scoreline was steadily increasing, ending with Mossley winning 6 – 2 against Ossett Albion.  This is the Mossley that have had such a dreadful start to the season. Oh, the irony.  

So Curzon have lost their 100% record this season and go second behind Lancaster City who top the table on goal difference. Never mind. To quote American basketball coach Dean Smith, “If you make every game a life-and-death proposition, you're going to have problems.  For one thing, you'll be dead a lot.”  Onwards and upwards.

Final score – Curzon Ashton 1 Salford City 1