It appeared to all intents and purposes that the gods were against Mossley in Monday's hugely disappointing defeat at the hands of neighbours Curzon Ashton.

A dominant first half performance saw Mossley once again miss several good chances only to go to the dressing room at half time trailing to an extremely contentious Kristian Dennis goal scored just two minutes before the break.

Sam Hind, Sam Madeley and Adam Mather spurned the best of the Lilywhites several decent chances to break the deadlock as Mossley defended solidly and countered quickly, putting plenty of pressure on a less than assured Curzon backline.

However, Mossley's biggest problem aside from the missed chances was the performance of referee Mr P.Marsden, who baffled players and fans alike with some of his decisions and interpretation of the rules throughout the game. Unfortunately for Mossley most of those decisions went Curzon's way and inevitably all but killed off Mossley's chances of getting a positive result from the game.

Curzon had barely threatened before they took that 43rd minute lead. The goal about came when Chris Brown blocked a shot from less than two yards away from the shooter which the referee deemed to be hand ball. Sam Walker's free kick rattled off the bar but Dennis was quickest to react knocking the ball home when clearly in an off-side position.

Mossley lost centre back Chris Brown through injury in the 61st minute and Mossley were still reorganizing when a cross to the far post saw Chris McDonagh undeservedly double the home side's lead.

That Mossley had to play the remaining 24 minutes of the game with only ten men was down to Curzon winger Scott Metcalfe conning the referee. Mark Haslam had been booked early in the game when winning a clean tackle only for Metcalfe to fall to the floor with a loud shriek which the referee interpreted as a foul. When Metcalfe did the same thing in the second half despite Haslam not even touching him, the referee brandished the unfortunate Mossley right back with a second yellow card and effectively ended the game as a contest.

Mossley reorganised again and went in search of a goal causing Curzon to indulge in some desperate defending. However, the inevitable happened in the 90th minute when yet another Mossley attack was thwarted and Curzon broke away. Metcalfe swung over a deep cross from the left that was met by recent Curzon signing from Mossley Chris Rowney who was left with a simple tap-in at the far post to rub salt in the Lilywhites wounds and give the scoreline a less than flattering appearance.

To Mossley's credit they were still attacking in numbers as the final whistle sounded a couple of minutes later to signal an extremely flattering 3-0 victory for the home side.

Report by Wizard

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