Rochdale’s Delaney ready to make the step up against Spurs
ON Tuesday night, as Harry Kane was tormenting Giorgio Chiellini in the Champions League in Turin, Ryan Delaney had his hands full as Rochdale slipped to the bottom of League One. Scroll on to this afternoon and Kane’s team-mates will meet the strapping Ireland U21 defender in an intriguing FA Cup fifth round tie at not-so-swanky Spotland. For ’Dale, this is unfamiliar territory as the little Lancashire club has never been beyond the last 16; in contrast, Spurs have won the Cup eight times. This is new for Delaney too, but he knows what it’s like to win the Irish Daily Mail FAI Cup after a hugely successful spell on loan at Cork City from Burton Albion in 2017. Slick Spurs are the latest test for Delaney, who has landed running at Rochdale after a January transfer from Burton Albion for an undisclosed fee. When he returned to The Brewers after helping City win the League and Cup double for the first time, Delaney found himself still down the defensive pecking order the struggling Championship club. ‘I went back to Burton wanting to play and said I’d give it a few weeks to see if anything had changed; it hadn’t,’ he said. When Rochdale came in for him on deadline day, he jumped and happily signed a contract until 2020. Was it a case of one step back to go two steps forward? ‘No, it was an opportunity to play games at a decent level. And the manager here has shown faith in me, so things couldn’t have gone better.’ Delaney was instantly pitched in to the bear-pit of The New Den against Millwall in the fourth round of the Cup, stood firm, and h0asn’t looked back. Yet to pass his driving test, Delaney will have to apply the brakes on free-scoring Spurs. ‘Whether it’s Harry Kane or (Fernando) Llorente, Spurs have world class number nines, top players who will test us. We’ll need to be at our very best,’ said Delaney. For a club of Rochdale’s modest finances, a moneyspinning replay at Wembley — never mind a win — would a result for them. Should Delaney help them achieve that, his profile would continue to rise. Already established as part of the Ireland U21 setup he could yet contend for senior honours.