Burscough v AFC Liverpool, 28th October 2023

A failure to beat Burscough would have meant ten games without a win. The latest instalment of that poor run was a 6-3 defeat at home to South Liverpool in the Liverpool Senior Cup the previous midweek. 

After managing to get to the ground about 10 mins before kick off, I decided to order myself a burger. My first choice was a bacon and egg roll. But they had no more eggs! As I was waiting for my burger, Tommy Douglas was played in on the right to fire us 1-0 up. A couple of Burscough supporters lamented a familiar defensive frailty. A few minutes later I joined our ultra supporters behind the goal, to witness what I certainly felt at the time to be some ridiculous refereeing. Tom Croughan was played through, and seemed to take it past the Keeper only to be clattered by the keeper and a certain foul and possible red card for the keeper. Wrong! Despite Tom being in possession and the keeper failing to make contact with the player, the referee judged it to be a foul by Tom. Not sure I could work that one out!

And so the game continued and we continued to look dangerous going forward. But defensive frailties from previous games in the full back areas were still evident, and just before the half hour mark the home side drew level. Parity remained for a little over 10 minutes, and then Tommy Douglas found himself through again in a near identical situation to the first goal on the right-hand side, and it was the same result to restore our 1 goal lead.

Was our half time lead deserved? Well I took a look around the new Clubhouse at half time and in the gents one Burscough chap certainly felt it was even in terms of balance of play.

We started well after the break and for a good period we looked the more likely to score the next goal. One cross from the right found Tom Croughan, but the keeper saved as expected. When you don't take your chances, we all know what can happen, and Burscough did rather predictably get back into things. They had one effort which came back off the underside of the bar, and a few other efforts which needed some crucial saves from Danny Hamlett in our goal. There was one save in particular where he got to it somehow, when it seemed the Burscough fella had an open goal to aim for.

I think it had just gone into injury time and Adam Moorcroft's header across the area went in off the post to secure the points. A fourth goal soon followed from substitute Liam Paton, after he was played in clean through. Burscough did get it back to 2-4. But that didn't stop me with a new chant, with us winning this fixture for the third time in as many seasons.  The last season saw us win 6-1. The chant was "Can we come here every week!"

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