AFC Telford United are not usually a club that settles for second best - but there is real delight at the New Bucks Head at that finish in the Blue Square North.
A comfortable victory at Victoria Park ensured their possession of the runners-up spot in what has been a remarkable first season in the second tier of non-League football.
And, whatever happens in the play-offs, it is a campaign that manager Rob Smith and assistant Larry Chambers can reflect upon with satisfaction.
The last game of the regular season was a strange one. The weather might have been in keeping with a cool spring day, but the football was more of the variety you would expect to see on a balmy summer’s afternoon.
Because there was a distinct pre-season feel about this game, which was largely devoid of any blood-and-thunder challenges of the type so often seen at this level.
And little wonder, to be honest. Burscough’s season was already effectively over, while Telford were understandably turning one eye to the little matter of the promotion play-offs that start on Wednesday evening with the exhausting trek north to Barrow.
Smith left Asa Charlton - surely a certainty to play at left wing-back due to Simon Forsdick’s injury - out of the 16-man squad altogether in order to eradicate the risk of him incurring a 15th yellow card of the season.
Creative midfielder Jon Adams was put on bench-warming duty while defender Stuart Whitehead was given a much-needed start in order to work on his fitness.
The main beneficiary of the tactical tinkering, though, was on-loan striker Ian Holmes.
The Mansfield man has only shown flashes of what he can do since arriving at the Shropshire club on transfer deadline day.
Indeed he had found himself relegated to the role of substitute in the last couple of games before being given one more opportunity against the Linnets.
It’s fair to say he took it. His strength and hold-up play made him an ideal target man and if there was one thing lacking from his game in the first half it was the finishing.
He could have had a hat-trick at least in that opening 45 minutes but had to settle for the one, firing in from close range with the chance handed to him on a plate by the superb header from Vaughan Thomas.
He carried on in the same vein in the second half and almost had a second with a powerful shot well-saved by Burscough’s rookie keeper Ian Lowe, only for Jamie Vermiglio to tuck away the rebound to double the lead.
Holmes did not have to wait long for his second goal, and it was a strike that, to coin a clichŽ, was worth the admission money alone.
Showing great control to chest down a long ball, his turn and volley were sublime and Lowe was left flapping at thin air as the ball rocketed past him into the top corner.
It’s easy to get carried away with a performance like this, and three straight wins will indeed give confidence for the trip to Holker Street in two days’ time.
But Smith and Chambers will know better than to get overly excited. Burscough themselves had four men out suspended and countless others carrying injuries - one of their named substitutes, Dominic Morley, was so obviously not going to be involved that he actually watched the game from the directors’ box dressed in his civvies.
The hosts and their depleted side were well-beaten but did at least snatch a consolation goal at the death, Ciaran Kilheeney netting from the last attack of the game.
That meant a lot to the prolific striker as it took him to 21 for the season and means he shares the division’s Golden Boot award with Hyde’s Gareth Seddon.
But Telford will now gear up for the biggest challenge yet as they bid to win their third play-off campaign in four years.
When the new club was formed in the summer of 2004 there were five divisions between them and then-League One sides Wrexham and Torquay.
Success over the next three games means that by a week on Friday they could be on an equal footing.
And there’s nothing second best about that.
By Chris Hudson
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