100 Memories for 100 Years - 90 to 86 Wednesday, 27th Jun 2007 17:23
We continue our 100 Memories series with 5 more memories which have gone towards forming Rochdale Football Club as we know it.
Dale
Great - Wayne Evans
|
As footballers go, full
backs don't really tend to attract attention. Indeed, its only if they have
the world's most ridiculous moustache, like a certain Gary Neville, that
anyone even notices them.
Certainly at Dale, if you ask any supporter to reel off a list of Dale full
backs, and it will be a list of players who should have been investigated by
the Fraud Office for pretending to be footballers. It's always the bad ones
that we remember at Spotland.
But that's there role in life. Full
backs are the footballing equivalent of being a drummer. They fill a
purpose, and you only notice their mistakes. You could take it a stage
further and and say that their only purpose is to make the opposition
wingers seem better than they actually are. How many times have you walked
away from the game, and said anything positive about an opposition full
back?
More often than not though, it's been
our own full backs who get the full treatment. And the right back slot was
one where we had especially suffered over the years, and to list the chief
culprits would simply exonerate those not mentioned.
And then along came Wayne Evans....
His career had been pretty
unspectacular. He was discovered playing Welsh football and signed for
Walsall. He spent six years at the Bescot Stadium, until an injury hit final
season saw him released after 229 appearances for the Saddlers, all of which
were at a higher level.
Then new manager Steve Parkin was quick
to make Evans his first signing for the club, and at a stroke, twenty odd
years of right back nightmares disappeared immediately.
The Abermule born defender went on to
spend six seasons at Spotland, and wasn't far off being an ever present
throughout that time. Without any doubt, he became the first name to be on
the team sheet, such was his reliability.
His first season saw him play every
game, and almost uniquely for a player in his position, he scooped the lot
at the Player of the Season do at the end of season, with a number of
trophies.
And so his time at Spotland continued.
He may not have gathered many more awards, but he carried on being Mr
Reliable at Spotland.
His strength was being in the right
place at the right time. He was solid in the tackle and typically no
nonsense. And he was flexible enough to fill in as a central defender as and
when required. There's a recurring memory of Evans, face full of panic,
somehow appearing in the box as the last man, making up for a centre half's
error and somehow rescuing Dale when all looked lost.
Goalscoring was not his strength with
just four goals to his name throughout, and two of them had more than a
touch of fortune about them, after a forty yard shot with all the ferocity
of a back pass was too much for Carlisle keeper Glennon in our 6-0 thumping
of the Cumbrians, and another at Darlington saw it rebound off a post, a
defender and a keeper on the way in. Guess they all count.
His final game saw him almost add to
that tally, as a McCourtesque run saw Evans stumble his way through the
Oxford defence, and with just the keeper to beat, he narrowly put it wide to
much laughing from his team mates.
But his total of 297 appearances puts
him well up with the greats in terms of longevity with the club, and
throughout that time, he never let us down.
|
Great
Goal - Atkinson v Rotherham
|
At the start of the
1999-2000 season, winning away was the easiest thing in the word, as we
started our campaign with five successive 1-0 wins away from home.
This winning goal came
in arguably was the toughest encounter of all of them. We were away at newly
relegated Rotherham who had made a great start to live in the Rochdale
division. They'd won all of their home games and yet to concede. Given Dale
had won all of our away wins without conceding, you'd have thought something
had to give. It did.
Dale certainly made hard
work of it. We weren't helped by having K. Lynch as referee, but no team
ever was by who was perhaps the most infamous referee at that time. Lynch
single handedly cut out hooliganism and supporters round the country came
together to share their hatred of the controversial official.
Anyway, Lynch had sent
Mark Monington off on his return to Milmoor. There were few arguments about
the decision as Monington was the last man, but our task became
significantly harder in the process.
Indeed, at that point,
it was very much a case of holding on for the draw, and checking your watch
every 30 seconds to see how long was left. Winning certainly didn't seem to
be an option, and a point would have been a fantastic result.
We had four minutes of
added time to endure. Where the four minutes came from is beyond me, but
there'd have been mass hysterics from the away end if the fourth
official had indicated there would be 10 seconds added time.
Five hours into that
four minutes of injury time, Dave Flitcroft got the ball in midfield and was
given a great chance to just run with the ball and kill off a bit of time.
Or so we thought.
He ran direct towards
the Rotherham goal, with "here for 2 minutes" striker Julian Dowe lurking
around. Dowe did the only worthwhile thing by drawing the central defender
as he moved out to the right hand side, allowing Flicker to continue his
run.
Now of course, nobody
expected Flicker to be able to run almost the full length of the field and
score. We didn't expect him to, the Rotherham defence and keeper didn't.
But more importantly,
Flitcroft didn't either.
And
from out of nowhere, knowing he'd gone about as far as he could, he nudged
the ball out left to Graeme Atkinson who no one had realised was even in the
same half of the pitch. Atko steadied himself and produced a superb finish
to send the 500 in the away end into one of the best celebrations of the
modern era.
Bodies were flying
everywhere, and I'd been jumping up and down for a couple of minutes before
I was jumping up and down on one of those bodies which had been flying
moments earlier. We had one incident where remaining in the away end was too
much for one supporter who wished to celebrate in with the Dale players.
Click here for more details. There was the mass stranger hugging that
only goals like this bring out, and Atko himself disappeared from view from
a long while under a heap of Dale players and supporters.
And we were rewarded for
this superb Dale goal by watching the mass ranks of Chuckle Brothers in the
home ranks pouring out of the ground to the soundtrack of "We only need ten
men" from the away end. Perfection.
This goal is many Dale
fans' favourite. And you can't really argue with that.
|
Great
Game - Dale 5 York 4
|
The biggest question
about this game was how it was played in the first place. The Spotland pitch
at the time was something of a saturated sponge for pretty much the whole of
that part of the decade. We
were well used to any bit of rain fall resulting in a postponement to the
extent that we used to do Weatherwatch updates on this site more frequently
than we did match previews, and on this particular night, wet didn't come
close.
It poured down, and we were all
expecting it to be either off before kick off or abandoned at some stage
during the game. As it was, it showed that all the so called progress made
to the game over the past 20 years is needless, as this game provided
entertainment in abundance.
You'd never have thought so. The two
sides had played out a drab 0-0 a couple of weeks earlier at Bootham
Crescent, and with the weather as it was, you could understand if people had
given this game a miss.
Dale were forced into the game with
patched up side as it was, and by half time, we'd have three further
injuries to contend with which used up all our substitutions.
York certainly started the better. Chris
Brass had shown that he doesn't just score own goals by putting the
Minstermen in front, only for Townson to equalise a couple of minutes later
via the penalty spot. But we weren't on level terms for long as Lawrie
Dudfield put the visitors 2-1 up.
With injuries really starting to take
its toll, Patrick McCourt was brought on just before half time with an
almost immediate impact. We spoke in our last set of memories about McCourt
and Townson linking up at Halifax and how it showed a class well above this
level. This was in evidence again.
Without doubt, I'd say this was one of
the most underrated goals in the past twenty years. McCourt and Townson
seemed to read each other's game perfectly. I don't know whether it was
McCourt reacting to Townson's run, or whether Kev had gone early on Paddy's
pass. It wouldn't put it past them for them to have both reacted
simultaneously, as McCourt produced this fantastic 40 yard pass for Townson
to run on to and finish past Super Alan Fettis to make it 2-2 in the last
seconds of half time.
If that goal was genius, the next was
sheer brute strength. With the pitch now resembling one of those flood
regions in Yorkshire, powering centre forward Lee McEvilly went shoulder to
shoulder with York defender Bullock. There was only ever going to be one
winner.
And whilst in this day of namby pamby
football, many refs would have blown up for the challenge on Graham Potter
which saw him come off second best and skid his way along the wet surface
towards the corner flag, this one didn't allowing McEvilly to continue his
pursuit towards the goal, blasting it past Fettis to give Dale the lead for
the first time of the night. Potter lay undiscovered in the water until
pitch resurfacing work took place in the Summer of 2006.
The lead lasted just a couple of
minutes, which was typical of this game, when Bullock put York back on level
terms, but for the length of time it took for York to equalise, we were back
in the lead when a rare Richard Jobson goal came via another Fettis error at
Spotland.
Jobson scored again later on to make our
lead comfortable, and whilst York gave us a brief score in the last five
minutes, we held on to win 5-4 with the most number of goals ever scored in
a match at Spotland.
The purists would have insisted that
this game never took place due to the conditions, but it was one of those
great Spotland evenings. Perhaps we should play ever game in the mud if it
brought the excitement that this game did.
|
Oh Dear -
Paul Williams
|
When you talk about the
worst signings that the club has ever made, it is almost inevitable that
someone will bring up Paul Williams. For the striker came to the club, hung
around for ages, played badly and failed to do the job that he was brought
in to do.
He
may have been signed on a free transfer from Stockport County, but the deal
that the club shelled out to bring him here was pretty substantial. From
memory, his three year contract was worth £110,000 making him one of, if not
the highest paid player in our club's history.
At the time, it seemed a gamble worth
taking. Dale were on the up, and we were looking to add to our fire power.
So we drafted in Williams on a month's loan from Stockport, and he was a
raging success. He scored a great goal at Crewe on his debut, and followed
it up with the winning goal in the derby against Bury to given himself two
goals in two games, and we all sang happily "sign him up".
After we eventually did sign him up we
had to wait until September of the following season before he added to his
goalscoring tally. Very quickly, it was clear that the transfer had been
nothing short of a total disaster.
But it seemed to be the typical Rochdale
way. How can a player go from two goals in three games whilst on loan in to
one who scores just a further five goals in forty appearances?
And it wasn't just a case of not being
good enough. The mistakes cost us money. Big money. A sitter missed at York
in the League Cup eventually led to our exit, York get drawn away at Man U,
beat them 3-0 and the rest is history.
Willow's time at Dale is well chronicled
in the book "Kicking in the wind", and memories of reading that book are
ones of then manager Mick Docherty desperately wanting to get rid of
Williams from the club, but to no avail.
I don't know why Williams proved to be
such a poor signing. He was big enough to cause opposition defenders a lot
of problems and he showed in his loan move that he could certainly finish,
but being married to the Stockport County chairman's daughter and the
subsequent "helicopter lessons" that he enjoyed as a result of that
lifestyle probably robbed him of any hunger that was required to make it at
League level.
But for whatever the reasons, Williams
was one of the poorest, and we've had enough poor ones to choose from. And
it perhaps it says it all that his best display for Dale was filling in as a
goalkeeper in an AWS game at Blackpool.
|
Only at
Rochdale - Sutton's Programme Notes
|
I
dare say by the time that we have finished this 100 memories feature, Dave
Sutton will have been featured very heavily. You could argue that it's
bound to because it was a great time to be a Dale fan, and the first time in
a long time that we were challenging at the top end of the table, and doing
so playing a very attractive style of football.
Either that or it could be
my age. It was around that time that as I got older that I could start
attending a lot more games around the country, so it stands out for me
personally because of that.
Or quite possibly, Sutton
will be featured over and over again because he was as mad as a box of frogs
and life was never dull with him around. As we mentioned last time round,
had the web been out around the time of Sutty, we would never be able to
keep up with him.
Did we ever get used to him
coming out with such bizarre statements? Never. I remember a top of the
table clash with PNE being hyped up to the extreme after Sutton described it
as being embarrassing to be playing Preston in such a game. And every new
signing seemed to have their tentative first steps in the Football League
accompanied by such ridiculous pressure labelling them as the new Cruyff /
Maradona / Gascoigne.
But above all of that, one
thing stands out. THAT programme page. That page, where normally a manager
would expand on previous statements or give that little bit of insider
knowledge that wouldn't make it as far as the local press.
But one day, Sutty took it
a stage further. And blatantly in a huff about something, decided that he
would go with just one statement. "One word of encouragement is worth ten of
criticism."
Now of course, the
sentiments are fine, but whether it's one word of encouragements, or ten
words of criticism, nine words of spitting your dummy will always do more
harm than good and if there were any doubters left about whether Sutton had
lost the plot or not, then this was final confirmation.
And of course, if that
wasn't bad enough, just take a look at the picture. There may have been a
point in time where sporting a shell suit wasn't as cringeworthy as it is
today, but no matter how popular they may have been, something of that
design could never do. At least we were spared the topless picture of
himself that he used to enjoy displaying in the programme.
So here it is in all its
glory - the infamous Dave Sutton page which has made all programme pages
ever since ever so slightly redundant. Sutton, we salute you.
|
Photo: Action Images
Please report offensive, libellous or inappropriate posts by using the links provided.
You need to login in order to post your comments |
Rochdale Polls |