SOCCER: Macclesfield Town 1 Shrewsbury 2
One offside goal and a defensive howler condemned Macclesfield as they returned to their bad Moss Rose habits on Saturday.
Shrewsbury pinched the points after Ryan Lowe scored a goal that should never have counted and Ian Woan converted a chance he should never have been given.
Michael Welch is level-headed enough to get over the air-swing that gifted Woan the decisive goal in the second half. It was a blemish on the 20-year-old's otherwise impressive season.
A late Danny Whitaker goal could not save the game, despite a second half Macc onslaught.
Manager David Moss could not fault his players' efforts - but they just could not score when it mattered.
Moss said: "It's the story of our season - our inconsistency.
"The performance wasn't that poor, but the result was very disappointing.
"We didn't start for 20 minutes, but having said that, we made four chances in the first half and didn't take any of them.
"If you take one or two of those, you get a different outcome."
Moss was right about the slow start to the match - neither team created anything of note in the first 20 minutes.
But Danny Adams missed a golden chance to put Macc ahead in the 23rd minute, nodding wide after Steve Hitchen's inswinging cross found him unmarked six yards from goal.
The outstanding Hitchen was at the centre of most of Macc's first-half attacking, providing another cross from which Chris Priest should have scored.
Matt Tipton went close a minute later when he lifted a Priest flick over keeper Ian Dunbavin but wide.
And then after all that home pressure, the visitors scored from their first attack. Sound familiar?
Darren Moss' right-wing cross was nodded back by veteran Nigel Jemson for Ryan Lowe to smack in from an offside position virtually on the goalline. The goal stood.
An unhappy David Moss said afterwards: "It was offside. Nigel Jemson headed it forward near the far post and it might have gone in anyway.
"But Lowe touched it over the line, and he had to be in an offside position in order to reach the ball because of the pace of Jemson's header.
"We're disappointed with that, but I was disappointed in a couple of things that happened in the build up to the gal, where we gave the ball away too easily."
Macc fought back with a couple of long-range efforts from Welch and Hitchen, which Dunbavin struggled to deal with as the torrential rain made the ball slippery.
But manager Moss decided that more was needed if the Silkmen were to recover.
He brought on David Eaton and switched from 5-3-2 to 4-4-2 on the hour - and the change nearly worked instantly.
Eaton fed Tipton down the right, and his skidding cross just eluded the outstretched Kyle Lightbourne.
But Macc's progress was immediately halted by a killer second for Shrewsbury.
Welch took a wild swing and missed Lowe's cross, Woan slipped but got a second chance after Tinson failed to clear, and the former Forest man slid in the second.
Jamie Tolley would have made it three but for a close-range stop by Steve Wilson as Macc failed to clear a corner.
Then Tipton hit the post for Macc, before Whitaker took advantage of a David Artell slip to race through and pull one back.
The Silkmen piled forward in the last ten minutes, but some pretty desperate Shrews defending saw them through.
