Lady luck deserted Mossley once again at play off chasing Burscough’s Victoria Park stadium on Saturday as the Lilywhites slipped to an unlucky and avoidable 3-2 defeat.

The Mossley line up saw keeper Will Jones make his first start since the end of August after recovering from an ankle injury and John Bennett making a quick return to the starting line up following Callum Warburton’s unfortunate season ending knee injury sustained against Northwich in the previous outing.

To be fair to Burscough, they started extremely well and penned back a Mossley side who were unable to string a run of passes together. The homes side went close on a couple of occasions but Jones and his defenders kept them at bay.

Having weathered the Burscough 20 minute storm the game started to swing Mossley’s way. Tom Pratt almost broke the deadlock and Dougie Carroll was denied at point blank range by home keeper Calvin Hare.

The Lilywhites then took the lead on 26 minutes. Andy Keogh and Godwin Abadaki worked a move on the right and the latter’s clever through ball saw Tom Pratt smash the ball home from eight yards.

Pratt almost doubled the lead minutes later but the game turned around in the home side’s favour two minutes before the break.

Burscough broke down Mossley’s right Will Jones made a good block to deny his Burscough namesake and Michael Monoghhan’s rebound effort was blocked on the line by Tom Dean only for the referee to point to the penalty spot despite a lack of Burscough appeals for an alleged foul by Danny McDonnell on Monoghan. Home skipper Paul Williams scored from the spot to level matters.

Worse followed for Mossley as on the stroke of half time Michael Thomas was uncharacteristically caught in possession with no cover behind and Burscough broke at pace with winger Karl Noon putting the homesters ahead.

Two minutes into the second half Mossley found themselves with a mountain to climb when Andy Keogh unfortunately looped a header into his own net after a wind assisted deep cross by Smart.

Amazingly, Keogh made amends within a minute as his cute glancing header from Tom Pratt’s fine left wing cross brought Mossley instantly back into the game.

Mossley controlled the game for the remaining time but were unable to break down a stubborn home rearguard. Michael Thomas came closest to a deserved equaliser when he headed wide from a great position when he would usually have been expecting to score.

Wiz