Easter weekend is always one of the most important times in the football league season and this year’s was no different.

The race for second and third spot has come down to three teams, Torquay United, Crawley Town and of course Shrewsbury Town.

The bank holiday fixtures began on Friday with Torquay taking on Accrington and Crawley hosting an in-form Crewe Alexandra side. For a lot of the afternoon results looked as though they could go our way with Crawley trailing for 88 minutes until a late penalty salvaged them a point and Torquay getting themselves a solitary goal in the last 20 minutes to give them a 1-0 victory.

So we knew what we had to do as we made our way to a rainy Moss Rose on Friday night. A victory would lift us two points above Crawley and keep us within three points of Torquay with a game in hand.

An encouraging first half display from the Shrews saw us go into the half time with a one goal lead thanks to a fantastic finish from in form striker James Collins. Second half came and we continued to dominate with two more goals, one from Mark Wright and another from Collins to give us a 3-1 victory with Macclesfield grabbing themselves a consolation between our second and third goals.

Any Town fans who were at Macclesfield will understand the conditions in the away end were hardly the best so it was nice to be back on our home turf on Easter Monday where Bradford City were the visitors.

We took the lead in the game through an early goal from Jermaine Grandison and continued to look dominate throughout what was a very entertaining first half. The game was a lot more even second half but we showed the resilience to keep our promotion march going with another three points and another game unbeaten at home.

Torquay got lucky again at Oxford on Monday, snatching a last minute draw after being reduced to ten men whereas Crawley come back from a goal behind to beat Barnet 2-1 away at Underhill to keep the pressure on.

So as things stand we stand in third position following the Easter period. We currently stand one point behind Torquay with a game in hand over them. Crawley have played the same amount of games as us but stand two points behind us as things stand. So I think going into the final five games of the campaign we are just ahead of the other two teams.

Of course this could all change on Saturday when Torquay host Southend United, who have the most away wins in the division, while Crawley have the easiest of the three games this weekend, hosting AFC Wimbledon. Whereas we take on Rotherham United who in the big news of the weekend have just appointed Steve Evans as their new manager and I’m in doubt the former Crawley manager will be hoping to make a good impression at his new club and do his old one a favour by finally breaking our home record.

Roll on Saturday!

You can follow me on Twitter @LiamHoofe

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