Pre-Season 2011/12: Week Three & Four

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.

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