By David Wilkinson
It will be nine seasons since we last played Cinderford, which was a win for Macclesfield, in a game that Macc had to fight back from, being down at half time. Macc finished 6th that season in National One, so one can only presume that Cinderford were relegated. Macclesfield were 30th in the league structure then, their highest position since the leagues formation. There’s a lot of water gone under the bridge since then; and Saturday will be a pretty level playing field. Even though the Gloucestershire side sit several places above Macc, it looks like some of their fixtures, so far, have been against slightly lesser opposition.
Speaking to Head Coach, Rhys Davies after Thursday night’s training, these were his thoughts: “The boys have trained really well tonight, and they are up to the challenge … they will now have got last week out of their system, and are now ready to reset. Ollie (Longmore) and I remember Cinderford well, from a few seasons back, when we were at Sale FC. They were a big experienced pack back then; that liked to take you on up-front, but also with some serious attacking play out wide. They’ve lost a few of their more experienced forwards since then, but we don’t expect their tactics to have changed too much. We will be ready for that, and ready to match them.”
Macclesfield have made a few changes in the starting line-up, with Christian Hone and Andrew Darlington starting in the front row. It should be a highly competitive contest, and the boys in blue will be looking for a five-pointer, so please come and cheer them on, and be as loud as you like – they love it! This is how the team lines up: 1. Christian Hone, 2. Ollie Longmore, 3. Andrew Darlington, 4. Ben Blackburn, 5. Harry Harding, 6. George Boughey, 7. Harry Hughes, 8.James Oliver, 9.Dan Martin, 10. Dan Leake, 11.Jamie Harrison, 12.Harry Blackwell, 13.Harry Oliver, 14.Sam Adu, 15.Billy Birkett, 16.Dan Percival, 17.Theo Hulbert, 18.Elliot Thompson, 19. TBC, 20. Mason Winterburn.
