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Spoils shared at Gawthorpe
Early on our quality was evident as, despite the wind, we constantly broke through a creaking Macclesfield defence. The game was around 10 minutes old when we were up and running as we broke from our area with Akbar. He brought the ball out and threaded a beauty of a ball through to Connor Smith, taking advantage of space made by Turner's run. Smith then ran clear of the defence, into the box, and adroitly rounded the keeper before rolling the ball home.
It should have been the beginning of a convincing win and certainly felt like it would be. We continued to run freely though the static defence but Turner was guilty perhaps of making poor decisions with his ball use when others were better placed to finish than he was.
Then the visitors equalised. A long distance looping heaper was caught on the wind and Jon Sergeant was embarrassed as he misjudged the flight and the ball dropped in off the bar. The lead up to the goal left Jack Overson limping and the unfortunate defender was once again unable to complete the game, seeing himself replaced just before half time.
The 2nd half was a very scrappy affair, with most of the play in the central third as the conditions thwarted any attempts to play. We made a double substitution on 60 minutes as Alex-Ray Harvey and a Young trialist striker were brought on to freshen things up.
Twice the trialist was unlucky with marginal offside decisions. The first caused a goal to be chalked off and the second saw a clear penalty denied. At the other end Macclesfield rattled the bar, but that too wouldn't have counted as again there was a flag.
The early quality had proved to be a false dawn for the watching crowd as the game ended in stalemate.