Macclesfield Town v County ... a brief preview

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TRIP TO MOSS ROSE

Other demands on my time make this preview a little shorter than usual, as County visit Cheshire neighbours, or should that be County Old Boys, Macclesfield Town. The team from the Moss Rose lost one of their former County players in the summer when Adriano Moke opted to switch to Wrexham for 2015-16. However, they gained Kieron Dennis on a season long loan from the Hatters. As you'll see from the form summary below, he is yet to score for Macclesfield this season, but then again this also applies to all his team-mates.

IN THE PAST

It's only four months since we visited Macc, as County lost out by a narrow margin to the Silkmen in the Cheshire Senior Cup Semi-Final. The County line-up, over half of whom have now left the club, was: Ian Ormson, Wes Benjamin (Scott Duxbury), Mark Lees, Connor Hancock (Greg Wilkinson),Stephen O'Halloran, Matthew Todd, Tunji Moses, Charlie Russell, Bobby Lofthouse (Danny Glover), Jack Ryan, Chris Sharp.
Read All Things Stockport County's report if you want to revisit that night

Macclesfield went on to beat Jim Gannon's Northwich Victoria side in the final. This probably proved no real compensation for the fact that they missed out on the National League promotion play-offs by just 1 place.

PLAYING CONNECTIONS

As for the County old-boys there are three ex-Hatters still on the books at Macclesfield. At full-back they have Andy Halls, in midfield is club captain Paul Turnbull (pictured right courtesy of SCAN),County's youngest player when he made his debut in his first spell at EP, and up front (or in the other full-back position) is whole-hearted player Danny Rowe, Tommy's brother not the AFC Fylde player. If we drop below the players with competitive first team appearances you can also add goalkeeper Richie Branagan, who wore County colours as a pre-season trialist a few years ago.

FORM

A quick run-down of Macc's pre-season result starting with the most recent. On Wednesday they lost by the narrowest of margins to league 1 side Bury. In this game yet another former County man, Danny Whitehead (pictured right courtesy of SCAN), was on trial so the striker who was sold to West Ham United might face County for the first time since he left, if John Askey decides to take another look at him.

Last Saturday Macclesfield had the same result as County, a 0-0 draw at home. In their case the vu=visitors were another League 1 side in Rochdale.

Tuesday 14th saw Macc somewhat surprisingly trailing 2-0 at Nantwich Town at half time, despite starting with several senior players. For the second half they put out a line-up that can only be described as a bunch of relative strangers, and went on to lose 3-0. The team that commenced the second 45 minutes consisted of 4 named players and 7 trialists. This game followed on from an equally disappointing result, a 0-0 at Kidsgrove Athletic, albeit in their opening outing of the season.

Given the significant use of trialists so far, I think you can be fairly sure that the list of names below will be supplanted by a few men with no-name when the teams meet on Friday.

NamePos
Richie Branagan G
Dan Cowan D
Arthur Gnahoua F
Andy Halls FB
George Pilkington CD
Neil Byrne CD
Raynes-Brown D
Curtis Haynes-Brown LB
Paul Lewis M
Paul Turnbull M
Danny Whitaker M
Tony Diagne M
Danny Rowe W
Theo Bailey-Jones W
Chris Holroyd F
Danny Whitehead F
Jack Sampson F
Kristian Dennis F


Ian Watts

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