Macclesfield Town 0 Gillingham 0

Match 33/11/920 - Saturday, 10 December 2011 - League Two

Macclesfield Town (0) 0
Gillingham (0) 0
Att. 1,724

Entrance: £14 Senior
Programme: £2.50
Mileage: 506/2,730

Match Report

Thirteen-and-a-quarter hours of my life I’m not going to get back.

A brief glance at the text of the banner of this blog tells you I should not have been at Macclesfield yesterday. Far outside of my boundaries with fuel remaining at its prohibitive levels, another circumstance convinced me that this was a trip worth making, how wrong can you be?

I’ve a keen interest in family history and the paternal side of my family was largely based in the Macclesfield area at the turn of the 20th century and I recently discovered the whereabouts of my grandmother’s resting place at Macclesfield Cemetery, so we decided to combine Gillingham’s visit to Moss Lane with a trip to the cemetery. Armed with a map of the cemetery, that is 68 acres of vastness, a plot number and a grave number (how wonderful is the internet to supply all that information) we set out to fulfil this part of the day. Sadly, it didn’t go to plan, whether the grave never had a headstone or it has been flattened due to neglect, we were unable to find it, much to our disappointment.

Time for fish and chips and a stop off at the Mill Street Chippie, which on previous visits to Moss Lane had served up some of the best fish and chips on the League Two circuit. Unfortunately, our extended search at the cemetery had taken us past closing time at the chippie and we were left hungry. It became all the more frustrating later that evening reading on Twitter that the Gillingham players had used Mill Street for their post-match fish supper, with the journo singing the praises of his fish supper.

And on to the match . . . well the non-event that was the League Two encounter between two sides so damn awful they didn’t deserve the patronage of the paltry attendance of 1,724, at least 200 of which had a four hour journey home to reflect on the wasteful nature of the day.

Gillingham deserved to win the match by virtue of the fact they were the least shit of the two sides, hardly an accolade, Macclesfield were nothing short of shocking. Jose Veiga, in the Silkmen’s goal was called upon to make two second half saves of note from Curtis Weston and another from Danny Jackman, whilst Ross Flitney was untroubled and probably as bored as the rest of us. And not to bore the rest of you, there was absolutely nothing else worthy of mention.

It was cold; snow had covered the pitch earlier in the day but had been cleared by a bunch of willing volunteers, bet you wished you hadn’t bothered chaps!

Taking the positive, it was an away point against a side that has a pretty good home record, but that remained small compensation for a day of total frustration.