Instead of playing two different teams in each half, we played two different teams in two different matches with both games kicking off at 3pm.

With the test match doing very little to tempt me away from another afternoon watching Dale in preseason action, we headed down to Cheshire for the annual fixture with Macc. You'd imagine that the two sides could end up ten divisions apart, or even moved to a European Super League, and at some stage, there would still be the Macc v Dale game in some format.

The week's whispers brought some uncertainty to the travelling 121 Dale supporters, when there was no Henderson in the Dale starting line up. The conspiracy theories started in our car, and were growing when we got to the ground and realised that half of the rest of the side was missing as well and it became clear that we'd sent quite a strong side to take on Man United at Alty.

The starting line up at MAcc was: Diba, Rafferty, Kennedy, Lancashire, McNulty, Allen, Camps, Lund, Noble-Lazarus,Alessandra, Andrew.

The starting line up against Man U was: Lillis, Cannon, Tanser, BBM, Kisimba, Rose, McDermott, Vincenti, Henderson, Bunney. There were talk that had Joe Rafferty travelled to Altrincham that would have used up his one match ban but we don't know how true that is.

Macc were as Macc always are - a side featuring Danny Whittaker, and they also had their new summer signing Neill Byrne in their back four.

The game itself was something of a non event, and 0-0 looked predictable from early in the game, and it was no surprise that some fans opted to head to Alty midway through the first half. Mind you, with the lack of goal flashes coming from Moss Lane to Moss Rose, no one was exactly spoilt for entertainment.

Matty Lund was the star performer and he could easily have had a hat trick on other day. He had a couple of bullet headers cleared off the line that looked to have goal written all over them, and once against Jonny DIba looked to have added a level of maturity to his game and it was only thanks to him with a low save deep into the one minute of injury time that the game remained goalless.

Twitter updates as we left the game showed that the Cup game against Man United had gone to penalties and a Josh Lillis save was enough to separate the sides as we picked up a 5-3 win. Bury await in the final and I wouldn't be surprised to see both sides being severely weakened rather than give anything away before the season starts.

Anyway, based on the two games I've seen so far, the starting line up against Posh will be:
Lillis, Cannon, Kennedy, Eastham (if fit), McNulty, Lund, Allen, Vincenti, Henderson, Alessandra, Andrew.

Photo: Action Images

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