Assistant boss Gary Simpson took a young looking Silkmen side the Eastwood Town last night for the last of our pre-season friendly fixtures. The game ended in a keenly fought 2-2 draw with Macclesfield's goals coming from Nick Blackman and John Rooney.

"We didn't want to take any risks given the season starts on Saturday, so that and the fact the youth team don't start their season for another week or so, meant we decided to take a very young team to Eastwood," explained Gary.

"And by and large we did extremely well against a much physically stronger team. We rode our luck at times after taking the lead. But we stuck to a pattern we had worked on and I thought we deserved the result. It would have been easy for the lads to buckle when they scored their second. But they didn't and kept their work rate high and continued to close them down and when the chance came John Rooney took the second goal extremely well."