Curzon Ashton came out on top in a tense Tameside derby on Tuesday night, and in truth league leaders Mossley can have little argument with the result, this despite going into the break with the lead. Curzon came out and played with more verve and penetration to take the points, albeit with a highly contentious goal.

It’s a cliché in derby games that ‘form goes out of the window’, although that isn’t supposed to mean that both teams play poorly, but for half an hour that is what happened.  The Lilywhites and Curzon were both trying to use the pace of their front men to get round the back of the defenders, but passes were inaccurate or easy to read for the back line, which led to an attritional opening 30 minutes.

Then, suddenly, there were a couple of pieces of pure quality that led to Mossley taking the lead.  Ash Young switched a pinpoint cross-field ball from half way to the left corner of the box.  The ball landed at Adam Mather’s feet and with his first touch he left a Curzon defender in his wake, sprinting past him and then angling a precise shot into the far corner.

This buoyed the home side, and minutes later Kayde Coppin trickiness led to a driven cross across the face of goal, an area that Jay Gorton had just vacated having run in from midfield for a header then backed off for a cut cross.  Then Chris Rowney played an accurate ball for Coppin over the back line who outpaced the defence with the ball at his feet only for Ollerenshaw to save with his legs.

However, only Tony Evans will know how he didn’t level for the visitors when Dave Young fluffed a back-header succeeding only into putting it into Dennis’ path.  The Curzon man got to the byline and cut his cross to Evans, who from 6 yards with only Pearson to beat somehow put it wide.

The half time break was extended, thanks to an injury to a linesman.  A call went over the tannoy for a qualified individual to come forward, otherwise the game might have to be abandoned!  It took a while, but eventually someone did hold their hand up, and after a quick change found himself running out to run the line on the far side – spared scrutiny from the bulk of the crowd on the clubhouse side!

The break appeared to do Curzon good.  Just 3 minutes after the restart they were level after Metcalfe got down the left side and drilled a low cross that Mather tried to clear, with Evans lurking menacingly, but could only slice the ball past his own keeper.

The visitors seemed to be opening up Mossley at will down the left.  Another low cross found Evans in a similar place to his first half miss, but whilst this time he at least got his shot on target, Pearson was alert to save smartly and smothered the ball too.

Mid-way through the half, Coppin claimed a penalty when falling in the box, but the incident looked like a six/half dozen claim, as the referee might have easily given a foul against the Mossley man, but any sense of grievance was heightened seconds later as the ball broke to Hadfield who lifted the ball over the defence for Evans.  The whole crowd looked to the linesman for a flag – Evans looked well offside – but instead he waved play on.  Evans finally showed enough composure to make no mistake in lashing a high shot past Pearson.

Mossley tried everything to get back into the game – changes in personnel, changes in formation – but nothing seemed to spark them into life and they could not create any clear-cut chances.  Indeed, Dennis had the best effort, again to cries of ‘offside’ from the Mossley faithful, but Pearson saved well again.  It was only in the last minute that the home side could threaten the goal, but Richardson’s shot from a tight angle was saved by Ollerenshaw’s feet at the foot of his post.

Report by Jonathan Haggart

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