| A crowd of over 3,200 turned up including a handful from Essex to see if Dale could continue their winning streak and put pressure on Chesterfield at the top of the division. On paper, this should have been an easy three points, but.........This game was 1999-00 revisited. Usual story. Dale had the bulk of the possession and the chances and the away side score with their first shot on goal. And of course, it could only be Dale's transfer target Martin Carruthers who got the winner.
Dale went into the game with the same team that hammered Shrewsbury 4-0 last week. That meant that Dale stuck with 4-4-2 and there were no place in the starting line up for former Southend man Simon Coleman. Southend fielded a very tall team with Carruthers up front alongside former Man City defender David Morley, who played as a make shift striker. In their bright orange kit, you could not be forgiven for thinking we were playing Holland.
The game began like the previous one had finished. Dale looked by far the better side, but struggled to make any real breakthrough. There were a couple of decent attempts, including a free kick from Lee Todd but it failed to trouble Woodman in the United goal. Southend themselves offered very little in reply, and once again the talk on the terraces / stand / posh executive boxes was about how many Dale would score today.
However, midway through the first half, the unthinkable happened. Former Spurs trainee David Lee fed a ball thought to Martin Carruthers who had broke clear of the Dale offside trap in acres of space. With no defenders anywhere near the striker, keeper Edwards came out and narrowed the angle down superbly, forcing the striker quite wide. It looked like Taffy had done enough, but Carruthers still managed to fire home.
This goal actually brought the one moment of comedy to the game (other than the referee!), when in an attempt to stop the shot going in, a couple of the Dale defenders raced across the line, and grabbed hold of the net, ripping it down. (perhaps with the cash we will get from repeats of this on Question of Sport, Soccer AM etc we can improve our Carruthers bid?). It took around ten minutes for them to fix it, with a bit of string needed as they had also broke part of the stanchion in doing so.
After the lengthy delay, the game was finally restarted but it soon descended into a scrappy match. The referee seemed to be dishing out yellow cards for fun at one point, and you had the feeling that someone would be sent off before the end. Ellis was booked for a late challenge, as was Flitcroft, whilst Roget and Martyn Booty were booked for Southend. The latter seemed lucky to stay on the pitch after scything down the ever dangerous Phil Hadland.
The second half started well for Dale with Gary Jones narrowily missing, but any hopes that the second half would see a rejuvenated Dale soon fizzled out, as the game continued to be scrappy. Dale struggled as an attacking force, by the tall and Southend physical defenders who weren't bothered about the odd bit of shirt pulling. Ellis and Roget both seemed to have each others shirts in their hands for much of the ninety minutes.
Southend reverted to playing just Carruthers up front, and packed out the defence and midfield, making it very difficult for Dale to play the controlled passing football we are used to. Full credit to the visitors as their efforts had made it impossible for Dale to operate their usual game, with the Dale players getting very little time on the ball indeed.
The visitors almost doubled their lead, when the stumpy Scott Houghton, who had already been booked for diving, raced down the left, but fortunately for Dale, he had already started writing the Sunday headlines in his head, and instead of passing to at least two team mates who were in the clear, he shot himself, but his effort was well saved by Edwards.
Manager Steve Parkin made a few changes to things in a bid to snatch an equaliser. Phil Hadland who had caused all sorts of problems for Southend was withdrawn and replaced by Simon Davies. Plattini picked up a knock after being kicked by a defender or two, and was replaced by Lee Buggie who after starting slowly looked lively, and caused a couple of hairy moments for the visiting defence.
It was still a bit scrappy, but Dale piled on the pressure late on. Tony Ford was brought on for the final few minutes, which added a touch of control to Dale's play.
Tony Ellis almost snatched an equaliser with time running out when a corner was headed on by Mark Monington, and Ellis, a couple of yards out, turned and shot. Unfortunately, his effort was rebounded for another corner. That following corner brought all sorts of panic to the home defence, but the number of defenders made it difficult for Dale to have any real attempts on goal. Another corner saw Monington and Woodman come into contact but the referee decided to play safe and awarded a free kick to Southend despite the fact Woodman had jumped into Mono.
The inevitable final whistle came at around 5pm, much to the pleasure of the visitors. Post mortems took place around the ground, but the simple reason was that it just wasn't our day. The passing never really took off, and Dale struggled to overcome Southend's approach of crowding them out at every given opportunity.
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