Any remaining hopes Mossley had of reaching the end of season play-offs were dealt a near fatal blow by local rivals Curzon Ashton who gained swift and comprehensive revenge for their defeat on Easter Monday.

The early stages of the second meeting between the two sides in ten days suggested that the Lilywhites would pick up the baton from where they left off at the Tameside Stadium. Within sixty seconds of the match kicking off Lee Blackshaw fired a shot narrowly over the cross bar after wriggling through a couple of challenges and they followed this up by exerting a tremendous amount of pressure which kept Curzon contained to the general vicinity of their own penalty area.

Sadly it couldn't last and by the time the game clock had ticked over into double figures the visitors were comfortably the team in the ascendency. Their sole game plan of hitting it as hard, as high and as far as they could up the pitch might have been awful to watch but it was brutally effective and through it they opened the scoring. Although it must be said not without a little help from Mossley.

An attack broke down and the ball was immediately launched towards the far end corner of the pitch. Unfortunately for the defender attempting to shepherd the punt off a for a goal kick, he got his positioning wrong and allowed Ajay-Leitch Smith to take possession and play a square pass to Dean Canning - alone and unmarked in the the Lilywhites box - who made no mistake in firing a shot past Peter Collinge.

The failure to pick up players in a blue shirt when they entered they Mossley penalty area quickly became a feature of the night and if Curzon hadn't been so wasteful with their chances, the game would have been over bar the shouting long before the interval. Instead they only managed one more before the half came to an end and it arrived courtesy of a penalty after another passage of play best forgotten finished with Smith being tripped in the box; Michael Norton completing the punishment from the spot.

Ten minutes into second period Canning doubled his tally for the game. Taking advantage of being unmarked again - this time while being little more than a yard away from the line - he headed the ball home, finishing a move that began by Mossley surrendering possession all too cheaply in the middle of the park.

Rather than opening the floodgates, it spurred Mossley into their best spell of the game. Chris McDonagh almost connected with a knock down from Michael Fish, Nick Allan shot narrowly wide and Matty Kay had a very good claim for a penalty ignored by the match official. It was from the corner resulting from the latter incident though that Mossley did reduce the arrears; Andy Watson deflecting the ball over the line at the back post.

If Michael Fish hadn't had a goal incorrectly ruled out for offside not long after, it's possible that Mossley may have gone on to rescue the game, such was the panic that was slowly beginning to spread through Curzon's back line as the pressure increased. The raised flag of the official however not only cancelled out the goal but signalled the end of Mossley's mini-revival too.

The Lilywhites saw little of the ball over the final twenty minutes of the match as Curzon slowly wound down the clock with a copious amount of time wasting; something not all that surprising given it was the latter stages of both sides sixth game within the space of a fortnight.

The visitors found a spring in their step though to add a fourth in the closing moments but again it was Mossley who were the architects, this time with a comedy of errors that ended with Norton rolling the ball into an empty net from the edge of the area.

Whether it was a game too far in an overcrowded fixture schedule, the kind of off night all teams have at some point or simply being outclassed by a better side (the truth probably lying somewhere between all three), the defeat means that the highest position Mossley can realistically finish in is seventh and considering where they were in the league at Christmas, that's some achievement in itself.

Report by SJNR

pics by Smiffy