Impetus can be Rochdale’s for the run-in

HAVING secured their place in League One for next season, Keith Hill is urging his squad to mount a sustained push towards the play-off places in the closing weeks of the season.

An injury-hit spell from mid-January to mid-March hindered the club’s bid for a top six finish, but with ten games to play, Hill still felt there was plenty to play for ahead of Tuesday’s clash against Millwall at the Crown Oil Arena.

“It was important to get that win against Gillingham and that’s why I put Joe Bunney in,” he said. “Whether he’s capable of going again on Tuesday night I’m not too sure.

“I think we have now confirmed our League One status which Rochdale supporters, myself included, should be celebrating. I feel proud to keep Rochdale in League One and we have ten games left, so who knows? I look at the league and everybody else has played 38 or 39 games.

“We’ve played 36 games and we have games against a lot of teams below us and I just feel that could give us some impetus going into the next phase of the season.”

One thing Hill will not be doing is experimenting and blooding players fot the sake of it in the final weeks of the campaign.

“We want to chase the dream, there’s no question about that, but the first port of call is League One status,” he said.

“There is a determination and a desire from the players, but I don’t want any player experimenting with my future and I certainly won’t experiment.

“Jim McNulty said to me recently ‘nobody has a right to expect me to give shirts out or appearances’ – they have got to earn the opportunity and they have got to earn the respect, not just of me, but of the players.

“I think some of the senior players trust me a little bit too much on awarding or giving players appearances, and it shouldn’t be about appearances, it should be about winning appearances, winning performances from those players.

“But I get this modern era player who doesn’t accept responsibility and I am always fighting that, and the players, the older players, are always fighting that. There has to be a sensibility to the way we do things.

“Experimenting with my future? No chance.”