New Mills maintain their positive start to the season

Benito Lowe scored New Mills' first on Tuesday. Pic: NMFC.

A late equaliser saw West Didsbury & Chorlton earn a 2-2 draw against the visiting Millers on Tuesday night, Birch and Mike Norton’s men having won their opening two matches beforehand.

And as they now prepare to face two more sides who have had similarly good starts – Abbey Hulton at home on Saturday and Wythenshawe Amateurs away on Tuesday – Birch didn’t have too many complaints overall about how things have gone.

He said: “We’ve got what our performances have deserved so far and seven points from the first three games is good considering we’ve been missing a lot of key players and are still not playing as well as we can.

"At Didsbury on Tuesday I felt the first-half was as poor as we’ve been and we deserved to be behind. A few choice words at half-time saw us go out and get the lead but then we didn’t close the game out well enough and gave away too many set pieces late on, which against a big side like them is always going to give you problems and so it proved.

“Jake Pollard and Nathan Fallon were both back on the bench at Didsbury and we’ll have new signing Rick Tindall ready to play a part on Saturday.

"Abbey Hulton and Wythenshaw have both won two and drawn one, like ourselves, so in what is a tough division these will be two more good challenges.”

Meanwhile, New Mills Football Club will to host the inaugural Ian Nevison Memorial Trophy match on Sunday, August 22.

At 11:30am a New Mills Juniors U13/14 side will take on a Woodley Albion U13/14 team.

Then at 2pm a New Mills/Woodley Sports XI managed by Tony Hancock will take on a Curzon Ashton XI managed by John Flanagan, with the Ian Nevison Memorial Trophy at stake.

Admission is £5 with U16s free.

There will be a number of fund raising activities on the day, including an auction, raffles, football card etc.

A programme will be produced for the event and the club are asking for businesses and individuals to sponsor the programme, prices being £50 for a full page advert and £25 for a half page. If you are able to advertise in the programme please email [email protected] for details.

All funds raised for the event will go to The Ian Nevison Trust.

Further details, including players taking part, will be released in the coming days.