Dale crashed out of the LDV Vans trophy to last season's winners Port Vale. The game finished 2-1 with Kevin Townson giving Dale a early second half lead which was soon cancelled out.
There were in fact though a lot of positives to come out of this game. Dale's weakened line-up gave Port Vale a pasting and did not deserve for one minute to lose the game. In fact had it not been for the interference of a certain referee than Dale would of booked their place in the next round.
Dale manager Steve Parkin finally decided that tonight was a good time to rest our key first team players, so there was no Evans, Griffiths, Jones or Platt in the team. Instead Dale lined up as follows: Hahnemann, Duffy, McAuley, Jobson, Bayliss, Durkan, Flitcroft, Oliver, Doughty, Townson, Rose.
The first half was a pretty dull affair, with barely any chances created at all. The best of which fell to the visitors from a corner. A header came towards the Dale goal but McAuley cleared off the line, much like he did last week against Cheltenham!
Dale started the second half the better though and within 4 minutes had taken the lead. The ball ran for Townson on the left hand side of the area. In a moment of magic he managed to lift the ball over the keeper into the top corner for his 8th goal of the season.
Dale's joy though was short-lived. The referee decided to take matters into his own hands and deny Dale the victory. He harshly awarded Vale a penalty when their seemed to be no contact whatsoever made during one of their counter-attacks into the Dale box. The Dale players protested in vain, and the fans in the WMG showed their disapproval at the referee's decision. Sagi Burton stepped up and scored.
Port Vale got their winner just over 10 minutes later. A mix up in the Dale defence saw Armstrong in on goal and his effort seemed to deflect off somebody before going into the net giving Hahnemann no chance.
On 71 minutes the referee finally made a right decision - one of his only ones in the match! He had no choice but to send off Killen for a disgraceful tackle on a Dale player just in front of the Vale fans - who seemed not to complain as they knew also what a bad tackle it was.
From then on Dale piled on the pressure and should of got an equaliser. Substitute Patrick McCourt was causing all sorts of problems for the Vale defence and on a number of occasions his crosses struck the arms of Vale defenders, but typical of his biased performance the referee ignored the decisions. In the dying seconds of the game Townson burst through on goal and had a good effort parried for a corner. Then from this a header went narrowly wide of the target.
The lads who played tonight can be thoroughly proud of themselves. They not only took on a good Division 2 side, but at times they outclassed them. If this is the standard of Division 2 then we will have no problems when we finally get there.