Dale 1 Macclesfield 1

Indeed, it was a game that we really could have put to bed early in the game, but a combination of disappointing finishing and incorrect decisions cost us in the long run, and whilst we can point to the linesman bottling it when Murray's header crossed the line, the top and bottom of it all is that we didn't do enough to win.

We started out with a starting eleven that looked on paper to be our strongest available team. That meant that for perhaps the first time in a very long time, Gary Jones was available for selection yet didn't feature. Undroppable? Clearly not.

The tone for the game was set in the opening seconds of the game. Rundle was on a break down the left, and was just chopped by local boy Edgehill. In any other minute of the game, it would have been a yellow card. But for some reason, there's this unwritten rule that you can get away with things if not all the fans have sat down.

But whilst that was a minor irritation, a minute later we should have started an avalanche at Macclesfield. Clever work by Chris Dagnall saw him unselfishly thread the ball through to Glenn Murray.

It was one of those chances that you can't put a price on. Murray v the Macc keeper with all the time in the world, and the sort of chance that Murray would score from 9 times out of 10. Unfortunately, this was the tenth chance and Tommy Lee saved with ease. If ever you needed proof of Murray being out of form, then this was it.

But Dale weren't to be pushed back, and they maintained the impressive momentum that we started off with, and it was Murray again who had threatened. He took advantage of a bit of confusion within the Macc defence, and it looked for all the world that his header was going in. However, this time (and this time only) it was genuinely cleared off the line by the on rushing Dimech who seemed to have avoided the pie shops that he used to frequent in his Mansfield and Chester days.

Macc on the other hand were offering little. You'd be hard pushed to think of any chances that Macc had within the opening stages, and that was something which continued for much of the ninety minutes. Spencer saw little of the game.

And then took the league. With all our attacking prowess of Dagnall, Murray and Le Fondre, it was one of the Macc players who decided to get himself on the Dale scorers list to the sound of a thousand first scorer betting slips getting ripped up.

Dale had a free kick which they took quickly catching the Silkies napping, and a Rundle cross was diverted into his own goal by defender McNulty. A proper own goal and certainly not one that even in your wildest dreams could be credited to Rundle.

And at that point, you thought it was the bit of good fortune that we'd perhaps been lacking this season and that possibly another 5-0 hammering like we enjoyed last season might have been on the cards. We'd have been quite happy with a decent performance and three points. It wasn't to be.

The Macc equaliser came from absolutely nowhere. On loan defender Guy Branston needlessly shoved Martin Gritton in the back and Gritton fell to the floor like he'd been snipered. Branston gave the referee no alternative but to give the penalty. The resultant penalty was one of the best penalties I've seen in recent years and Spencer wouldn't have been able to save it even if McIntyre had told him beforehand where he was going to place it.

And that penalty was pretty much it for Macc for the entire game. Save for a goal scored five minutes after the game had been stopped for offside and Gritton shoving the ball wide with an open net which again had the linesman waving for offside.

There were two other talking points from the first half. The first was an injury to leading scorer Chris Dagnall. He injured his knee and looked to be in massive pain. He looked to have shook off the injury but it was clear within a couple of minutes that he'd have to come off.

And the other was the goal that never was. Glenn Murray had nodded home a corner at the back stick, and it looked to the entire ground that the ball had crossed the line before the Macc keeper Lee scrambled it away, but neither the referee or the linesman had the bottle to make such a decision in pretty much the same way that Edgehill got away with his booking in the first half.

I do hope we aren't talking about this goal at the end of the season and talking about the difference it would have made to our season had it been given. Sadly, things like this often do.

As for the second half, well we huffed and we puffed but we didn't blow down the Macclesfield house. There was the off sniff here and there, but nothing that you'd say was a clear chance.

Indeed, our best chance probably came courtesy of our first half scorer McNulty who had the ball rebound off him and go narrowly over the bar from about a yard out. Had he scored his second, he would have been the only true contender to the highly impressive Tom Kennedy for the man of the match.

Apart from that it was a case of the walking wounded. With three substitutions already made, it was a case of seeing it out until the final whistle. In other circumstances, both Doolan and Lomax would have been brought off but were forced to hobble their way through the rest of the game.

It was two points dropped, but wasn't one of those games where you came away shaking your head not knowing how we'd not won. We were the better side, and I said at the beginning it was a better performance than in recent weeks, but we have tougher tests coming up with trips to Shrewsbury and Darlington coming up in our next two games, and we might be looking back at this as a wasted opportunity.

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