NATIONWIDE NATIONAL LEAGUE. SATURDAY AUGUST 23rd 2025.

Sometimes, Fairy Stories really do Come True…

Just seven short days ago, the prognosis for Morecambe FC as it was a Basket Case in the Intensive Care Unit of the English Football No-Hope Hospital was really bad and seemingly terminal. The stadium was shut and already being colonised by weeds; the staff and the few players that remained had been unpaid for months and the indescribably malevolent individual who has being wrecking our club for the last seven very long years was still in charge.

But six days ago, everything changed. Suddenly, the club had new owners with a vision for the future. They put their money where their mouths are by settling all the considerable debts; totally restructuring the club and starting to build a virtually completely new team under utterly new control. The pace has been breath-taking – and it continues to evolve at the same speed.

So we start today’s report with a brief update about further signings by Morecambe Football Club since I posted my Totally Unofficial Preview of the season yesterday.

First of all, Jon Stewart has been appointed as Barry Roche’s successor as Goalkeeping Coach at the club. He had a long and varied career as a goalkeeper at clubs as diverse as Bournemouth, Burnley and Bradford Park Avenue but arrived from Buxton, where he had been the specialist goalkeeping trainer at the National League North club since 2022.

Former Manchester City Academy scholar Daniel Ogwuru has also signed on the dotted line. Manager Ashvir Singh Johal said of the 20-year-old forward:

“Daniel is a really exciting young player. He’s a striker who suits exactly the way we want to play. Daniel has been at two very good category one academies in Manchester City and Norwich. We know that he will be someone that is hungry to develop, learn and improve as a football player and contribute to the main goal of helping this team do as well as we can this season.”

Admiral Muskwe has also been snapped-up by Morecambe. The 27-year-old Zimbabwean international forward – whose birthday (which he shares with his twin sister Adelaide) was just two days ago – is a former Leicester City Academy Player of the Season. As a Leicester player, he was loaned-out to EFL clubs Fleetwood, Swindon, Exeter and Wycombe. He was then at Luton Town for a season and signed very briefly for Harrogate after that last year before moving abroad to play for Finnish  Premiership club IFK Mariehamn, who he left on August 11th. Ashvir said about Admiral:

“He has big experience in the EFL; he’s played in the Championship. Admiral is a very, very hard working striker who, in the box, is very confident at finishing from a variety of situations. We think he is going to be a big success at Morecambe and he is someone that fans are going to be really excited to see.”

Signed in time to actually feature in today’s game, former Fulham Academy scholar Ma’Kel Campbell – or, to give him his full name, Ma’Kel I Preston Khamari Paul Bogle Campbell – is now also a Morecambe player. Although his full name might be literally a stretch to fit on the back of a shirt, Ma’Kel is another lad with bags of potential. The nineteen-year-old is a midfielder and his last club was Peterborough United.

A player who was on-loan to today’s opponents for all of last season from Oldham Athletic is now also a Morecambe player. The 28-year-old forward Joe Nuttall signed earlier today as well.

But now let’s move on to today’s game. At a time when Morecambe’s very existence as a football club was in the balance, this is what I wrote about today’s visitors to the Mazuma Mobile Stadium in my guide to other National League clubs earlier this year:

It’s just 72 miles from the Mazuma Mobile Stadium to Moss Lane in Altrincham, eight miles south-west of Manchester. The Robins have played at this venue since 1910 but were actually founded nineteen years earlier than this in 1891: almost three decades before Morecambe FC was first established.

The Shrimps first encountered Altrincham when they both became founder-members of the Northern Premier League (NPL) during 1968. The Robins were a part of the triumvirate of really strong clubs which had left the Cheshire League to inaugurate this new competition. But unlike Macclesfield Town and Wigan Athletic, they have never been able to enter the Hallowed Ground of the EFL. Back in 1968, the Football League was a Closed Shop which the NPL was created precisely to try and break open; replacing the stranglehold of weaker clubs in this elite cabal with new blood which could – and should – have revitalised the entire English game at that time.

By rights (and in terms of sheer talent alone) the Robins should have broken into this fortress when – led by later Manchester City Chairman Peter Swales – they consistently did well in the new league. Altrincham also regularly beat Football League opponents in a succession of FA Cup runs during which they reached the Third Round proper for four years in a row between 1978 and 1982. (One of their claims to fame is that they have knocked more EFL clubs out of the FA Cup than any other non-league team ever: seventeen altogether – and counting.)

In 1979, they became inaugural members of the National League and Football Conference’s predecessor: the Alliance Premier League, which they were Champions of during its first two seasons.

But still they were kept out of the Football League by the way the competition was rigged by the consistently reactionary old fossils who have always administered it, then as now.

Seven years later, they caused one of the biggest all-time upsets of FA Cup history when they beat then members of the upper tier Birmingham City (with a young David Seaman in goal) 1-2 at St Andrews.

The 1990s were not happy times for the Robins, however and the club were twice relegated back to the Northern Premier League. By 2003, however, they had battled their way via the new Conference North into the renamed Vauxhall Football Conference but were reprieved on four occasions from further relegations by the resignation of Canvey Island; the liquidation of Halifax and the expulsion of both Scarborough and then Boston United.

Their luck ran out when they were relegated to the newly-renamed National League North in 2011. They bounced back only to be relegated anew in 2015 before slipping even lower into the Northern Premier League just twelve months later. But they fought their way back once more and turned fully professional for the first time ever in 2022 as a National League member. They reached the Play-Offs in 2024 only to be knocked-out by eventual winners Bromley in the semi-finals. Last season, they finished ninth in the National League.

In 1978, the Robins won the FA Trophy at Wembley, beating Leatherhead 3-1 four years after the Shrimps had achieved this biggest feat in their own history at the time. Altrincham then lost their next final appearance in 1981 by the only goal of the game against Enfield. In 1986, however, they were back at Wembley again when they beat Runcorn by one goal to nil and thus won the Trophy for a second time: only three clubs (the now defunct Scarborough and Telford United plus Woking) have ever won the FA Trophy more than Altrincham has.

Morecambe last encountered the Robins in the Conference two decades ago (both clubs won two of four league games) but before that, they met countless times in the NPL.

I’m not entirely sure how to record all these results but I can tell you that Morecambe lost 1: 4 to Altrincham at Christie Park on Saturday 6th December 1969; beat them 2:1 on Tuesday, 8th September 1970 and lost to them sometime in the 1971-72 season by two goals to three because these were games I personally attended.

A number of players have performed for both clubs, most notably Kevin Ellison; Jack Redshaw and – very recently – Marcus Dackers.

Morecambe will be playing their fourth National League fixture – and second home league game – against Altrincham on Saturday, 23rd August 2025. The return game is due to be played at Moss Lane on Saturday, 3rd January 2026.

As things have shaken-down, of course, today’s game at the Maz was both the first of the season for Morecambe anywhere and the debut of sacked icon Derek Adams’ replacement as Manager as the focal point of the club’s new Sikh owners, Panjab Warriors.

Unsurprisingly, Morecambe started this game in the relegation positions in the National League: twenty-first in the table. But they had obviously played no games so far: the three below them – Aldershot, Woking and Truro City – have played three each and lost all nine of them.

For their part, Altrincham have lost two games so far (2-1 at leaders Rochdale followed by a 0-2 home reverse against Hartlepool United last Tuesday) and won only one: their home opener against the Shots who they just about overcame by three goals to two. They arrived in sixteenth place in the table.

Robins’ Manager Phil Parkinson (not to be confused with his namesake at Wrexham – unless you want to pay him a hell of a lot more money) said this before the game:

“We’ll obviously be preparing as we would for every game we play. We’ll do our due diligence, we’ll work extremely hard and prioritise recovery as we have a quick turnaround over the weekend. Our sole focus will be on Morecambe up to Saturday, then we’ve got to be ready again for Solihull on the Monday.”

For the home side, Manager `Ash’ left the pre-match interview to Captain Yann Songo’o, who stressed how much both he and all his team-mates – old and new – were looking forward to the game and a new challenge. Last night at the Winter Gardens in Morecambe, former Co-Chairman Rod Taylor asked the assembled multitude of Shrimps’ fans for patience. He pointed out that `Ash’s’ squad had only had two proper training sessions and obviously no pre-season at all. He added that he had asked Kit-Man Les Dewhirst to put the players’ name on the back and front of their shirts so that they could more easily recognise each other….

The weather has been unseasonably dry in north Lancashire in recent times and today was no exception. There was not even a threat of rain as the game kicked-off just after Midday but it was fairly windy and the sun only started to shine properly as the afternoon grew older.

There was a carnival atmosphere before the match and I have never seen such queues to get into the ground ever before. This was relieved somewhat by traditional Sikh courtesy. For example, I was given a pie which was a bit like a large samosa plus a sweet which turned-out to be cold rice pudding with sultanas in it – for free – by a delightful young lad wearing what I believe is called a patka – basically, a Morecambe Red topknot.

Wow: and both the Indian treats were truly delicious…

Apparently, this was the biggest collection of home fans in the stadium since League One days: only 246 of the assembled 3,730  – with due deference to the people who chose to attend from all over the country to show their support in our hour of need – weren’t Shrimps’ supporters.

Anyway, the game started evenly enough. Archie Mair made a routine save after about three minutes and the visitors looked and played like a team. However, they were up against certain individuals who could clearly have the talent to really click at this level of football. And most eye-catching of these is someone I have often maligned on these pages for not trying and failing to get stuck-in: Ben Tollitt. Today, I thought he was the best player on the park with all due respect to Luke Hendrie, who was awarded the official Man of the Match accolade by the sponsors.

After just six minutes, Ben went on a run on the Morecambe left, beat one man, then another and kept on going. His eventual shot was only parried by Luke Hutchinson in the away goal but Tollitt was quickest to react to the rebound and fairly walloped it past him to send almost the entire stadium into raptures.

With Gwion Edwards looking lively but debutant centre forward Harrison Panayiotou struggling to make any impact in the game, the Robins started to play their way back into it.

`Harry’ was presented with a gilt-edged opportunity to double the home team’s lead after twenty-five minutes. A mistake in the Altrincham defence saw him presented with the ball on the edge of the away penalty area on his left with only Hutchinson to beat. He should have just put his laces through the ball but instead, tried to chip the goalie – and missed by a mile.

It could have been a really expensive mistake. Throughout the rest of the contest – such as during the first five and final five minutes of the second half – the Robins dominated possession. At times like these, you realised that in impressive Raheem Conte on the right and imperious Ludwig Francillette in the middle, Ash has unearthed two outstandingly good players. Both suffered from cramp during the game and Raheem had to be helped off, looking a bit distressed, during the second half. Let’s hope he’s not torn something…

(But even then, Ben Tollitt was a star. As a trained Physiotherapist, he was first on the scene to administer the correct amount of pressure to the extended leg muscles on Conte first time he went down.)

But as Altrincham started to dominate the play, Morecambe were caught-out by a real sucker-punch after 34 minutes. A simple lob forwards caught-out Morecambe’s new defence and Robins’ recent signing Jimmy Knowles went on a purposeful run forwards before confidently sweeping the ball past Mair to equalise. It could have been worse for Morecambe after fifty-one minutes when the young goalkeeper was caught in possession by Charlie Kirk trying to play the ball out only for covering defenders to snuff out the danger. He made amends, though, right at the death. After an attempt by substitute James Gale had been blocked by the home defence, Archie somehow managed to keep-out a seemingly certain goal by Kahrel Reddin by reflex alone – probably with one of his feet. It was an extraordinary save.

Morecambe were under the cosh at this point in the sense that the visitors were yet again dominating possession. But in the ninety-eighth minute – yes, you read that right: cramp and other fatigue injuries to Morecambe players meant that there was ten minutes of added time at the end – the Shrimps won the game. Once more, Tollitt took the ball further and further forward before slipping the perfect pass to a man whose shirt lettering was probably still not dry – Daniel Ogwuru – who buried it to win the game for the Shrimps.

The place went nuts…

Having finally come down again, I must say that the standard of Refereeing today was excellent. Man-in-the-Middle Oliver Mackey and his team didn’t miss much (or even anything) and it was a refreshing change to watch them operate after years of really weak officiating in the EFL. So well done to them as well.

Given the New Start we have had, I thought it might be a good idea to introduce an innovation to the way I have been doing things like this for years.

I thought we might take a look at how the opposition sees the match I have just attempted to summarise – for once. (Yes – maybe literally for once because I’m not promising to do this every week.)

To be fair, too, this is not an idea I first came up with. Whilst celebrating a literally extraordinary week in the life of Morecambe FC with some of my pals after the game this afternoon, one of them loaded the Report I am about to summarise onto his PC and we all read it.

I will say little more except this is how what I have just written about here was interpreted on the official Altrincham FC website by one John Edwards.

It started with the heading:

Agony for Alty as outplayed Morecambe pinch 98th Minute Winner.

And then continued with the following key snippets:

“Charmed existence off the pitch, charmed existence on it. No wonder Morecambe fans were pinching themselves when the final whistle sounded at the Mazuma Mobile Stadium this afternoon after a turn of events few of them could have predicted.

Fresh from seeing their club escape extinction by the skin of their teeth, it looked for all the world like being the toughest of introductions to life in the Enterprise National League as their team endured a battering at the hands of a dominant Altrincham, up to and beyond the 90-minute mark.

When the fourth official’s board indicated 10 minutes of added time, all seemed lost, as Alty continued to pepper their goal.

Surely they couldn’t survive, but having perfected the art of escapology with a takeover no-one expected to reach fruition, they did it again by not only holding on in the face of a fierce Alty bombardment but breaking clear in the 98th minute to steal the unlikeliest of victories.

What a cruel blow…”

Well – it’s always good to try and get a balanced view of proceedings, isn’t It? No Sour Grapes there Mr Edwards then.

According to John, we were lucky today. I don’t agree. If Altrincham had a cutting edge, they could – and maybe would – have won the game this afternoon. But – as far as both scenarios are concerned – they didn’t.

So what did Ash say in his first post-match interview ever as the boss of a First Eleven?

“I was confident we would win today. Everyone we’ve got in the building is a good player. Once we analysed the opposition, we know where we could hurt them. We started 4-3-3 but we couldn’t sustain that for a hundred and four minutes because (of) how physically difficult it is. In the seventy-somethingth minute, I called the players over to the dugout and (we went) for a different formation : 5:3:2. And in the last attack of the game, we scored. Obviously, that’s not going to happen every week.  We won’t win every game: that’s not how football works. You try and win every game. Sometimes, it doesn’t happen.”

Paying tribute to the tremendous atmosphere today and the reception he and his new team received from the home fans at the end, he added:

“If we lose, we still want the same support. If we win – exactly the same report. Let’s try something special here.”

The three points catapulted the Shrimps out of the bottom four into sixteenth position in the National League. The poor old Robins slipped to nineteenth place and have now lost three games in a row,

Morecambe: 1 Archie Mair (Y);2 Luke Hendrie; 3 Raheem Conte (23 Daniel Ogwuru, 77′); 6 Ludwig Francillette; 7 Gwion Edwards (Y); 9  Harrison Panayiotou; 10 Jake Cain (Y); 15 Ben Williams (19 Ma’kel Bogle-Campbell, 68′); 17 Paul Lewis; 18 Ben Tollitt; 24 Yann Songo’o (C).

Subs not used: 25 Alfie Scales, 26 Lennon Dobson; 27 Adam Fairclough.

Altrincham: 30 Luke Hutchinson; 2 Lewis Banks (C); 8 Isaac Marriot (Y) (Elliot Osborne, 67′); 10 Keaton Ward (14 Matty Kosylo 75’); 11 Jimmy Knowles; 20 Kahrel Reddin (Y); 22 Tom Crawford; 23 Tylor Golden; 24 Sam Barnes; 34 Dan Sassi; 40 Charlie Kirk (Y) (9 James Gale 67’).

Subs not used: 27 Louie Fallon; 3 Sam Reed; 16 Remi Raymond.

Ref: Oliver Mackey.

Attendance: 3,730 (246 from Altrincham).