Despite a valiant effort by Mossley, the Lilywhites succumbed to a third successive defeat on their visit to high flying Spennymoor Town on Tuesday night.

Mossley, can however, only blame themselves as two defensive errors and two ‘soft’ penalties proved the Lilywhites undoing.

The Mossley bosses can only have been delighted with their side’s first half showing as they penned the home side in brilliantly closing down space and displaying some tigerish tackling whilst also causing the Spennymoor defence plenty of problems.

Having penned the home side in for the entire opening period with both Dave Short and Andy Keogh being unfortunate not to open the scoring. This before a spell of Mossley pressure which saw the visitors take a deserved lead on 26 minutes.

John Bennett played an angled ball into the Spennymoor box and Andy Keogh teed up Tom Dean who struck a low angled shot into the bottom corner for his 9th goal of an impressive season. The first goal conceded by the hosts in eight games. A period in which they had also scored an amazing 37 goals.

Goal hero Dean was soon to become the villain though as Spennymoor’s reply was almost immediate, when, in their first serious foray forward they were awarded a penalty as the big Mossley centre back ever so slightly clipped Andrew Stephenson who went down rather easily and Joe Tait stepped up to crash home the equaliser very much against the run of play.

Mossley had their own penalty appeal waved away when a defender clearly handled on the line to prevent a certain goal.

The second half was a more even affair as Mossley continued to press the ball but long deliveries over the top of the Mossley defence were beginning to cause problems.

The home side took the lead on 58 minutes. Michael Thomas chased a Spennymoor forward to the touchline and won the ball. His pass to Dean was intercepted by the onrushing Anderson who hit a terrific angled thunderbolt of a shot beyond Liam Flynn’s reach and into the top corner of the Mossley net.

Mossley continued to press forward but the Lilywhites anguish was deepened soon after Andy Keogh had had an effort saved by Lowson.

Another angled long ball up the Brewery Field slope saw Dean again the culprit as Liam Henderson went down like the proverbial ’sack of spuds’ and the referee again pointed to the spot and once again Tait lashed the spot kick home.

Undeserved salt was rubbed was rubbed in Mossley’s wounds four minutes from time when the score was given a highly flattering look as a sliced cleared by Flynn saw substitute David Dowson nip in to score a fourth for Spennymoor.

Wiz

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