100 Memories for 100 Years - 100 to 96 Wednesday, 27th Jun 2007 17:04
We kick off our 100 Memories for 100 Years series with a look at some of the good, the bad and downright awful.
Dale
Great - Alan Johnson
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His
time with Dale was over all too fast. In fact, whilst he may have been at
the club for around a few seasons in total, it was in reality just one
season that we got out of Alan Johnson.
He was brought to the club by Graham Barrow
and up until that point in his career, he hadn't really done a great deal.
He'd spent some time at Wigan and a bit more at Lincoln, followed by a spell
playing in Hong Kong before arriving at Spotland.
He made an immediate impact, forming a
great partnership at the back with current Dale boss Keith Hill. In what was
an otherwise largely forgettable season, Johnson was one of the few
highlights.
He was everything. For a start, just by
the way he looked, he'd have scared the s**t out of most forwards in our
division. It was no wonder that he attracted the nickname of Psycho. You
just would not get past him.
But for someone who looked as menacing
as he did, he was a very clean player. His reading of the game was
wonderful, and whilst if he tackled you you'd have known about it, he always
did so fairly and for a central defender of his type, he picked up very few
bookings. He'd be flying in to tackles, but would always get the ball.
But after one season where he was ever
present and walked away with practically every Player of the Season trophy
going, then that was it. In the pre-season build up to the following year,
he picked up a ligament injury which if memory serves me right ended up
being misdiagnosed, and it eventually transpired that it was a cruciate
injury, ruling him out for the whole of the next season, and most of the
next.
We had a brief comeback from him where
he managed a handful of appearances from him, but it was never the same, and
that injury had pretty much robbed him of his career. A real shame for both
the club and the player. But while it lasted, there was no one better.
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Great
Goal - Dagnall v Rushden
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Now our overall
performance in this game was dire. Completely dire. And Chris Dagnall should
never have been given the chance in the first place to get us an equaliser.
Had there been any justice, Rushden would have won this game at a canter.
That said, had there been any justice, Drewe Broughton would have been
struck by lightning within the opening ten minutes.
But enter the Rushden
supporters. Now the use of the footballing gods has been mentioned many,
many times on the messageboard over the past couple of years. For as the
Rushden supporters taunted the Dale supporters in the final few minutes that
we were "Going Down with the Torquay" (and let it be said, we were indeed
heading to the Conference at this point), there was only ever going to be
one outcome.
And from out of nowhere,
Dagnall was put through. He turned one defender and left him in his wake,
and the Dale support which had been plotting their own funerals in the
minutes beforehand, suddenly rose up in anticipation.
Daggers was now clear of
the defence with just the keeper to beat, who fired past from just inside
the penalty box to silence the taunting home support. Of course, the away
support refused to leave the ground with the loudest chorus all afternoon of
"Going down with the Torquay" back at the home support.
Now it was a very well
taken goal anyway, but in terms of the effect that it had on the club
cannot be overestimated. Rushden were certainly on a revival, coming into
this game on the back of a five game unbeaten stretch, and we were sinking
further and further towards the drop. Defeat would have took Rushden above
us, and leave us just one point of relegation.
But that goal all but
knocked the stuffing out of Rushden, killing off their revival and gave us
sufficient lift that we lost just once in our final six games. Was it a goal
which kept us in the Football League? I'd be very tempted to say that it
was.
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Great
Game - Dale 3 Torquay 3
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The season 86-87 was
amongst the poorest that the club has suffered over the years. The football
was dire, and we came very close to losing our league status. But despite
that, it is a season that is now looked back on with a great fondness by
Dale supporters, with many a great moment along the way.
Indeed, all the emotions of that turbulent season seemed to be summed up in
this game. It was November 1986, on a typically dismal Rochdale afternoon,
and Torquay United were the visitors to Spotland.
Now Dale were deep in the first ever relegation battle when this game was
played, and we hadn't even reached Christmas yet. We were in 22nd place.
Fortunately for Dale, we were at home to a team who were one of only two
teams in the Football League to be below us, and this looked to be a great
opportunity to put some space between ourselves and Torquay and Stockport,
especially when we had thumped the Gulls 5-0 at Spotland on an even more
depressing Spotland afternoon the previous season.
But when have Dale in our 100 year history been anything else other than
unpredictable? Or should that be we have always been predictable in doing
what we were not supposed to do? Who cares? Anyway, the game was every bit
as drab as it sounded, and the 1251 crowd must have been thinking they had
made a big mistake turning up, especially when Torquay raced into a three
nil lead.
Now it would have been great to say that their lead was against the run of
play, that Torquay had been the recipient of some dodgy decisions or
something along those sort of lines, but we can't. Whilst Torquay may not
have deserved to be three goals up, we certainly deserved to be three goals
down and by the time they opened the gates with fifteen minutes to go, there
was a queue of people waiting to leave.
But then something very special happened. With less than fifteen minutes to
go, our forward line which consisted of Peter Conning, a striker with a goal
record laughed at by Mark Leonard and Graham Shaw, had near enough waved the
white flag. Enter the Dale defence.
From out of nowhere, with much of the crowd already left, Dale produced the
comeback of all comebacks, scoring three goals in the last fifteen minutes.
Defender John Bramhall got two goals, and a very rare goal by left back Dave
Grant silenced the anti Vic Halom chants (it proved to be his last league
game in charge anyway!), and stunned the visitors with a comeback of a
proportion we have not seen since.
I always remember this game for two reasons. First of all, my Dad was one of
the many walking out with just over ten minutes to go, and he assumed it had
been a mistake when Grandstand's Vidiprinter came up with the 3-3 scoreline.
Unfortunately, the second reason for remembering this game has left me as
one of life's eternal optimists. Because I have seen Dale pull a three goal
deficit back once, every game has been recoverable in my eyes ever since.
The fact that we have not produced anything close to this in the sixteen
years since it happened counts for nothing. Dale have always and will always
be capable of coming back from any scoreline. Even when trailing 3-0 at
Anfield at half time, I was wondering about the effect an early second half
Dale goal could have on the game. Just a shame someone only told Peter
Valentine half the script! |
Oh Dear -
Dean Walling
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Now
there's no doubting that after leaving us, he went on to have a good career.
Indeed, Carlisle fans will swear by him as being one of the best central
defenders that they've had in the past twenty years, but the problem was
that for us, we had Dean Walling as a striker. And he was dreadful.
In his favour, he could not be faulted for
his enthusiasm. He tried his heart out in ever single game, so he got a bit
of admiration that way, but you could pick any one from the terraces at
Spotland, and you wouldn't get much difference.
We got him from Leeds back in the mid
80's and whilst it may have worked out in the case of Lyndon Simmonds, in
terms of Dean Walling, it was pretty much a flop.
His time at Dale saw him score eight
goals in two seasons. Now fair enough, a lot of his appearances were off the
bench, but he made about seventy appearances during that time. Taitesque.
The most memorable thing that Walling
was ever involved in was on Tuesday night game at Spotland, when he had his
shorts completely ripped off during a game, and the then physio had to run
on and replace his shorts in the centre of the Spotland pitch.
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Only at
Rochdale - the Peter Ward miss
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Now
let it be said, that Peter Ward was one of the best players to have played
for the club during the 1980's. Fair enough, given the dirge of talent we
had during that decade that might not be saying that much, but Ward was a
great player for us, and went on to star at both Wrexham and Stockport too
where he is currently assistant manager to Jim Gannon.
But aside from coming back and sneaking off
with the Golden Gamble money one week when he was scouting for County, he is
remembered for one thing - his last minute miss against Crystal Palace in
the FA Cup.
It was a great game for Dale, as we made
the fifth round of the FA Cup for the first time in our history. We'd gone
down there, and spent pretty much the entire game getting battered. Had it
not been for keeper Keith Welch, we could have conceded ten goals that day -
definitely one of the best individual performances in our history.
But we had a chance. The sort of chance
that in games like this you only get one off. Last minute, we're trailing
1-0, and the ball gets crossed into the centre with Peter Ward lurking with
just the simple task of making contact with the ball, and everything else
should take care of itself.
The two away ends holding the Dale
support took a collective draw of breath as the ball came to Ward, only to
let out a collective sigh as Palace keeper Nigel Martyn pulled off a save
which was famously called a "million pound save" on Match of the Day later
that night.
It was our chance, and we'd missed it.
Of course, it's completely unfair that we call it a Peter Ward miss when it
was on target and therefore a Nigel Martyn save, but even scoring the winner
in the nine men win at Turf Moor can't change my overriding memory of Peter
Ward being the one who missed that last minute chance.
It goes without saying that had we took
them back to Spotland for a replay, we'd have beaten them, and then had no
problems beating Cambridge in the quarter finals who we'd already done the
double over that season. If it wasn't for that chance, we'd have gone all
the way and won the FA Cup itself. Probably. And then spent the rest of our
lives boring the pants off people by reminding them about it. Probably for
the best then.
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Photo: Action Images
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