I thought this was our season: Hill

KEITH Hill has admitted he believed this was going to be the season his side cracked the League One play-offs.

The Dale boss cited the fact the squad had, in the main, grown together through promotion from League Two and establishing themselves in League One, going close in the push for a top six berth in their first two campaigns in the division.

Hill felt this was the year to get over the line – but insisted the omission of key players since the turn of the year left Dale short.

“Because of the work that we’d done in the first part of the season, the first 23 games, we were always close – if we got our form right – to being a contender for the top six,”he told the club’s official website.

“I think going into January, and the work we had done over the last three seasons including the promotion season, we always felt if we kept the main backbone of this group of players – Jamie Allen, Matty Lund, Callum Camps – we did feel we would have a real opportunity.

“I tried my best to keep Oliver Lancashire or Ashley Eastham to get some continuity down the centre of the pitch, but we failed on retaining both of those players, but I thought that this was our season.

“We had taken the team from promotion, teetered with the play-offs in the first and second seasons, two top ten finishes, and I thought this season, especially after the first 23 games and with the players that we’ve got, the continuity, I thought this was a real opportunity to get a play-off place.

“It has just ebbed away for one reason or another, sometimes through lack of performances, but on most occasions I think it’s been down to personnel, not having key players available.”

Hill believes the club will be entering a new cycle next season in terms of the playing squad, with some expected to depart in the summer.

That means recruiting players to replace those who are about to leave.

“You have cycles, where you think you’ve done your work as a staff and a group of players and I feel we are turning out of a cycle of the last three and a half to four years and we have got to start looking at new recruitment and re-stimulating the players that we are retaining to go again next season,” said Hill.

“It’s testament to the drive and the ambition that we have as a management team and a staff. Our drive and intentions are to not just settle for mediocrity and I think that’s why we get so disappointed when we don’t achieve what I believe these players are capable of achieving.

“I have a great relationship with the players but I have a drive and an ambition to do things at this club that have never been done before, and that will always remain. I think it’s that drive and that intention that helps us avoid relegation year in, year out. That’s why I intend having the same drive and intention next season.”