Burscough manager Paul Bowes says he is looking to do club’s a ‘favour’ against Macclesfield.
Danny Whittaker’s side remained top of the pile in the NWCFL after Avro’s win over Skelmersdale United on Wednesday.
Skem missed the chance to go top leaving the title race solely in Macclesfield’s hands.
Burscough go into the exciting clash with the league leaders on the back of a hard-fought win over Litherland REMYCA.
Despite Tom McNamara scoring the crucial goal, there was a match-winner at the other end as 16-year-old Joe Mason saved a penalty, as well as a number of chances, to hand Linnets a good win over the relegation-scrappers.
Bowes told Off The Park: “I spoke to Luke [Denson] about it, he took the reins again. It was a hard-fought win, REMY are fighting for their lives and it showed.
“The lads said they didn’t expect that performance and how good they were going to be, they’ve been playing well in the last few week and all credit goes to Joe Mason our young ‘keeper, saving a pen 16 years of age, he’s been brilliant.
“He’s only quite small, he’s brilliant, he’s trained with us quite a lot this season and in training and the lads can’t score, shot-stopping is unbelievable, he talks, comes out for crosses but because of his size all season we’ve been a bit worried about him.
“But he’s been training with us and towards the end of the season, we thought let’s give him a chance, give Jack [Reynolds] a rest, so we’ve put Joe in for a bit and he’s took his chance with two hands, he’s been unbelievable. Keep performing like that and he’ll be with us next year.
“We just ground it out really, how we were towards October/November, rode our luck at times. It was good to have Kev Pollard back, to have him back for 90 minutes was just brilliant.
“There’s a few teams looking for us to do them a favour [against Macclesfield] especially after Skem dropping points and Wythenshawe on the tails, so we’ll try and do everyone a favour.
“It’s a massive, massive thing for the club. It’s good for our lads as well, first time some of the lads have played in crowd as well, it’s a good experience. It’ll stand them in good stead for the future.
“Everyone has got to remember this is a young squad and they’ve only been together for about five or six months, we may see the best of them towards the end of next season maybe year after if we keep them together.
“We’re not going to change our game plan. On our pitch, we’re aggressive, we try get the ball forward and get it wide.
“We’ve got people like George Lomax, I don’t care who the centre half is they’re having a hard game against George Lomax, doesn’t stop and we’ve got Chris Lomax, Tom Mc [McNamara], Tom Willo [Williams], Conor Christensen probably some of the fittest lads about, it’s handy.
“Breaking forward and breaking the formation hopefully we can cause Macclesfield some problems, over the season we have proved we can mix it with teams at the highest and the lads just have to prove it, massive occasion it’s down to them to prove it.”
[Featured image: Nick Gerrard]
