After hitting what was arguably the lowest point of the season with a defeat at home to bottom of the table Salford, the prospects of Mossley picking up anything against a team second in the league and then a bogey side over the course of the next seven days weren't particularly high.
However, and as if to prove the cliché about a week being a long time in football true, the Lilywhites followed up an impressive performance in their midweek victory over high flying Bamber Bridge with a display of equal calibre to claim a comprehensive win at Lambeth Grove, home of Stockport side Woodley Sports.
It was a win that was effectively decided within the space of five first half minutes as well. A period during which Mossley found the back of goalkeeper Ben Connett's net on no less than three occasions.
There was little Connett could do though but stand and watch as Danny Self got the blitz under way in spectacular fashion in the 17th minute. Twenty yards out and stood almost with his back to goal, Self acrobatically span and looped a loose ball past the stranded keeper and into the top corner of the net.
Self was also instrumental in Mossley's second goal. Picking up Danny Egan's intelligent through ball the former Maine Road player burst into the box only to be felled by one, or possibly both, of the Woodley players who'd converged on him. The referee showed no hesitation signalling a penalty and after a short delay while remonstrations were waved away, Egan calmly sent Connett the wrong way from the spot to register his ninth goal of the campaign.
Less than sixty seconds later the third goal arrived and contained elements from opposite ends of the football quality spectrum. The ridiculous, a woefully misjudged thirty five yard back pass by Adam Morning, gave way to the sublime as Danny Dignan brought the intercepted ball under control with his first touch and with his second, lifted it superbly over the onrushing Connett.
Not unexpectedly, Woodley's approach to the second half was to throw everything but the kitchen sink at the Lilywhites in attempt to rescue the game. They barely scratched the visitors back line though, let alone make a significant dent, as Mossley's resolute defending confined them exclusively to trying their luck with speculative shots from a distance that was never going to cause keeper Andy Robertson any problems.
If anything it was still Mossley who always looked the more likely to be the next team to score and that they didn't was down to a combination of some very near misses and a few eyebrow raising offside decisions. In fact the assistant referees flag was proving to be Woodley's best defender as their back four continually struggled to deal with the pace and movement of Dignan and Egan.
They got no respite either when the two Danny's were eventually replaced by Matty Berkeley and Michael Fish late on in the game, and both combined to set up the fourth goal for Mossley's other substitute, Lee Blackshaw; the winger stroking the ball into an unguarded net from the edge of the six yard box.
Hopes though of a second consecutive clean sheet for the Lilywhites where quashed when Daniel Queeley scored from the penalty spot with what turned out to be the last kick of the game. It took none of the lustre though off Mossley's performance and a week that began on a low with a drop into mid-table finished with them positioned one place outside a play-off spot and only six points behind the league leaders.
report by SJNR
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