Dale Great - Steve Taylor

So when Steve Taylor came along in the mid 80's, he did things that no Dale player had done in a long, long time. He became the first Dale player since Reg Jenkins to score twenty or more goals in a season, but he didn't just stop there.

In that season 1985-86, everything that Taylor did seemed to come off. He was your classic poacher, scored great penalties and had this wonderful habit of always being in the right place at the right time.

He finished that season with 25 goals in the league and further six in the cups to give him a total of 31 for the season. That was enough to secure him the top scorer in the division that year, winning the prestigious Adidas Golden Boot. You have to go back to 1927-28 to find someone who scored more goals in a season for Dale.

He came to the club as a much travelled striker. Like they all seemed to do in those days, Taylor was a player who seemed to spend every Summer trying to find a new club in Lancashire that he'd never played for. It wouldn't be unfair to say that he hadn't pulled up any trees at other times in his career, but in this year, everything just clicked.

But it was over all too soon. A good start to the 86-7 season saw PNE come in for him with a bid of £20,000. This was a transfer which very nearly cost us our league status, as without Taylor we really struggled to score goals. Many a game in those days saw the frustrated supporters sing "There's only one Steve Taylor" in the closing minutes as Dale once again finished goalless.

We had a brief return of the goal machine a couple of years later, and in true Taylor style, he grabbed an equalising goal on his debut in a rain soaked Spotland midweek game against Hereford.

If I'm being honest, I'd say Taylor was my first ever Dale hero.

Great Goal - McCourt v Halifax

Every so often, whilst watching Dale, there exists a moment. A truly magical moment, that on one hand you can't quite believe that it has happened, whilst on the other, you just know there and then that you have witnessed something very special indeed. This was one of those and we were very fortunate indeed that there were so many Dale supporters there to witness it.

Picture the scene. Dale chasing promotion on the back of a decent run of form heading to Halifax*. The Shaymen were in freefall and were heading to the Conference. At the time, the writing was already on the wall for 'Fax and they'd picked up just one point from their last ten games, and understandably, the Yorkshire faithful had become a little less faithful, with Dale supporters clearly outnumbering the Shaymen at their own ground. There was only to be one outcome.

But.... we decided to be more charitable than Lenny Henry when he realises he's got no more TV work anymore, and we ripped up the script and did our best to help out Halifax. We were shocking and produced one of the worst performances in recent years.

And we let Halifax take the lead. It was Neil Redfearn who later had a spell with Dale who scored for the Shaymen with a low shot across the ground. But it wouldn't last long, especially when the home side were reduced to ten men for something nobody really saw. Not that we complained.

But the game dragged on and on, and the inevitable comeback just didn't seem like happening, and with less than ten minutes of the game remaining, we were still waiting for the comeback to begin.

But a fortunate equaliser came after Lee McEvilly used both arms to charge down a clearance from one of the Shaymen, before seeing the 'Fax keeper dive out of the way before he'd even shot.

And so the stage was set. As Brian Moore might have said "It's up for grabs now", and so it was. Roared on by the packed away end, Dale suddenly remembered they were a promotion chasing side and went for it. Enter Patrick McCourt.

Now this game is often incorrectly cited as an example of McCourt's magic from the bench. He started the game, but he just did nothing for the first 89 minutes. But who's bothered about that when you get a 90th minute like this?

Paddy got the ball in midfield, on the left hand side, at what must have been the halfway line, and ran at them. All his energy saved up for one moment, and in McCourt style, he went past two or three, just beating them for pace. No need for the fancy footwork just yet.

As he approached the box, with defenders camped outside it, he laid the ball off to Townson. Now this was almost like a moment of telepathy between the two of them. There was only one thing that was going to happen, Paddy kept on running past the defenders, and Kev just gave it him back with a beautiful touch putting him clean through.

And just as a challenge was coming in, Paddy just stuck to the keeper's right, and started running off with more pace than his initial run had in the first place.

And we don't doubt that in years to come, legend will have it that McCourt picked the ball up in his own penalty box, beating 47 different players along the way to score, but the reality was good enough in its own right without the need for artistic licence.

It really was one of those moments, as were the celebrations afterwards, with plenty of random stranger hugging taking place. Youtube has the moment preserved forever more and is worth a visit to remind you of that glorious move. Click here to see it. The video is great, but it doesn't come close to time ticking away, Dale desperate for the points with over 1500 Dale fans packed closely charged up, and that realisation that Paddy was on one of his runs and was going to win it for us.

* = In case anyone is too young to remember, the town of Halifax used to have a football team who would play Dale regularly in the Football League in what was often considered the closest of all of the Roses football matches. They very much remain in the "Where are they now?" category.

Great Game - Dale 5 Chesterfield 1

And if all of that wasn't enough, we had Sutton's mouth. We'd become almost accustomed to it by now, but it was always guaranteed to raise a stir. God knows how we'd cope if Sutty was our manager in these days of the internet.

But anyways, amongst the many pearls of wisdom that came from the blond one's mouth was a bold prediction that Dale would score ten goals in a game one day that season. Of course, how we laughed and thought "here he goes again" but in September 1993 he had me believing it.

Chesterfield were the visitors to Spotland, and we'd made a great start to the season. We'd won five our of seven matches so far, and were sitting pretty at the top of the league.

We began the game absolutely on fire. This was a Dale side which was on top of its game, and it was no exaggeration to say we were a class above all our opponents at the time. Chesterfield just couldn't cope with us, and we'd scored five goals before the game had even reached the thirty minute mark.

We had goals from Shaun Reid, Steve Whitehall (2), Dave Lancaster and Mark Stuart, and Dave Sutton must have been feeling the smuggest man on the planet at this stage. We were ripping the Spireites apart at will, and the ten goals was becoming a very real possibility.

Unfortunately, the dreams of scoring ten were dashed as we played out the last sixty minutes of the game without adding to our total, and it remained 5-1 at the final whistle. Of course you couldn't blame them for doing so, the game was won - it was job done for the afternoon, but I have to admit to walking away from Spotland that afternoon just that little bit disappointed that we'd not got ten.

Oh Dear - Dale 1 Shrewsbury 7

We were having a bit of a blip in our push at the top end of the table, whilst the Shrews were in the slide. They'd picked up just two wins in their last fifteen games, and even though we weren't on top form, you'd have put money on Dale finding the sort of form which had seen us win 4-0 at Gay Meadow earlier that season. Oh how wrong we were.

The answer to our blip was to have a reshuffle, and for some bizarre reason go 5-3-2 in a bid to be more attacking. So we brought in the bald headed Simon Coleman.

He'd only managed a couple of games before for Dale, having suffered a number of injuries, but Dale fans were soon wishing he'd have picked up a few more as almost straight from the kick off, we were shambolic.

We didn't know what we were doing and Shrewsbury with their teenage striker Luke Rodgers quite happy to run rings round us, we didn't stand a chance.

And Coleman in particular was at the heart of everything. Without doubt, Shrewsbury fans will have named him as man of the match as he contributed more to their victory than even hat trick hero Luke Rodgers did.

It was horrific. It was like watching a car crash, and it was certainly too much for many with Spotland almost empty with a full twenty minutes of the game still to go, as many supporters voted with their feet and walked out as soon as was possible.

And I'll be honest, I hated Shrewsbury after this game. For what was (and still is) my favourite away trip, all my feelings towards those wearing Blue and Amber had changed in the space of one afternoon.

I took great delight in their relegation, purely on the basis of this game. Every goal we scored against them was celebrated with that touch more ferocity than it would have been against any other side, and it probably wasn't until we came from 3-1 down to beat them 4-3 that all the ghosts from this game were fully exorcised - especially as their fans had sung "We want seven" in that game.

The scars are still there, and I'll never forget telling the girlfriend of the time to venomously "F*** off" when caringly she asked how we'd go on when she got back from work.

Only at Rochdale - Barry Diamond

But Diamond was a Dale striker who played for us in the early to mid 80's. He was alright, without being anything special, and certainly we'd had a lot worse. But he cemented his place in Dale history when we visited Stockport in December 1985.

The problem was that when we travelled down to Edgeley Park that day, Diamond, whilst still on Dale's books, was on loan to Stockport and rather bizarrely was playing against us. Of course it was going to go wrong.

Diamond didn't exactly endear himself to his normal set of supporters through his involvement in two controversial penalties which were enough to help County on their way to a 3-0 victory, it was his role in the Joe Cooke sending off which acquired his place in Dale history.

Quite what actually happened is still for much debate after all this time. I remember letters in the Ob at the time suggesting that the old thing was planned from before hand, with Diamond at the heart of such a conspiracy.

What we do know is that Joe Cooke was responsible for leaving Diamond in a heap in the centre circle as the game played on. Reports suggested that Cooke had enough of Diamond and "told him so". Cooke played down the incident in recent years, but by then it was already part of Dale legend.

Diamond became the subject of much terrace abuse and very understandably, never played for Rochdale again.

So only at Rochdale would we have one of our own players secure two penalties for the opposition and get his own captain sent off from the field of play.