His arrival at the club was accompanied by a string of messages from supporters of his former side Grimsby who had apparently declared some form of fatwah against him. As it turned out, we had a signed a much better player than the one we were supposedly being warned about and Gallimore will be remembered fondly for his time at Dale.

At the time of his signing, he did look a bad signing. We had the young Goodall who had arrived at the club as a left back, and signing an aging left back who had suffered an injury hit season the year before, and even came to the club carrying an injury which delayed his start to the season.

However, he soon put everyone's fears to one side with a string of fine performances. Injury problems were no more and he was very much a first team regular.

He was played at both left back and on a number of occasions as a central defender when injuries dictated, whilst lacking a bit of height to play in the middle, he did very well and of course must have had more than a wry smile on his face as Dale did the double over Grimsby in his first season.

In addition to being a decent left back, Gallimore came with a reputation for being a proper hard man. He might not have gone about it in your typical Vinny Jones sort of way, but he did more than enough to put fear into other people.

I remember a reserve game where he threatened to rip the teeth out of an opposition winger who had the nerve to appeal for a throw in which was clearly his throw in, and there was rumours of a Scunthorpe player who requested to be subbed to get away from Gallimore.

Even Parkin seemed to come under the Gallimore's radar, who when asked whether a Gallimore goal was an own goal or not simply replied: "are you going to tell him it's not his?". This was clearly a man to fear. Even if he was a dreadful player, I still think we'd give him a favourable profile.

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