Hello again, and a Happy New Year to you all. Excuse my sabbatical, it's not laziness I can assure you *ahem* and I'll hopefully have the blog back to something less than the tri-monthly effort at the moment. Anyway there is plenty to talk about so i'll get on with it. 'The times they are a-changin' or so said Bob Dylan, and while he may have been speaking more about the social state of the US in the 60's rather than Macc Towns current season, he did have a point.

December saw long serving Kev Mac leave for Shrewsbury, Jimmy Mac for Stockport and Muzza Mac to Oxford. It saw our squad stretched to the max against Peterborough, which seemed an already very difficult fixture- but the team showed great spirit to win our first league game since Notts County in November. Playing with more loans than your average medical student- all 4 new lads making their debut- we came away with a result that will hopefully put some of the bad luck we suffered in December behind us.

2 points seems short change from some of the performances we put in, both draws coming from games where we were winning 2-0. Leading in the Wycombe game and coming away with nothing; and having the majority of the play and chances against Stockport, only to see them score twice on our own patch was hard to take. From a personal point of view it was even more frustrating, as I seemed to cut open easier than Ricky Hatton (don't tell him I said that), and had to come off early in 2 games. Franny Green and Tommy Lee both suffered injuries that have kept them out recently, and after being such key players in the first half of the season it's hardly helped. Both are hopefully on the mend but will have to fight, like the rest of us, to get a place back in the team.

Having some new faces in the dressing room has raised the stakes in training (sorry about that rogue elbow this morning Ashy) and it has helped nicely in the dressing room too. Replacing 2 scousers with 2 scousers has retained the balance of accents flying round in the morning, as Terry was just getting to grips with the slang (insults) coming from Kev and Jimmy.

Seriously though, it was a great start for Symesy/Ashy and Ryan/James from Sheffield as their first game in a Macc shirt was a winning one. The same can be said for the tenure of new Chairman Mike Rance and Vice Chairman Andy Scott who were both there to witness the victory, good luck to them too. With several tough fixtures coming up I hope we take the same spirit into those games as playing against the supposed better teams seems to bring out the best in us- ' be an underdog with a bite, not a dog with an underbite' as my old man says. I think.

As the theme for this blog seems to be change, nice work from Nick Oldham designing the new club logo, (Without a lawsuit from Chelsea in sight I hope). I particularly like the similarity to the Scottish Lion- I think it will look great on the mystery kit next season. The skinny-fit A line kit never quite suited my somatotype so I look forward to seeing it next year!