Second game a delight for Dale
ROCHDALE’S second team’s second game of the weekend was a victory against Urmston, who are currently second in the league and were defeated by Rochdale earlier in the season.
Rochdale started the game strongly with good pace and passing initially. but did concede a lot of possession and allowed the Urmston players to have plenty of time on the ball without going unchallenged.
However, it was on the counter that Rochdale caught Urmston napping. With a great run into the D, Rochdale won a short corner.
The ball was injected with pace by Dean Close to Imran Ansari who drove straight at the bottom corner of the goal, hitting an Urmston foot on the line, the ball was deflected into the centre of the goal to provide Rochdale with a lead.
Rochdale continued to absorb lots of pressure coming from Urmston, who were showing why they were second in the league table but Rochdale were showing great resilience in the face of this pressure and were cutting out many passes and took them to half time with a narrow lead.
When the second half started Rochdale put a lot of pressure on the Urmston defence and were constantly overloading with the Rochdale defence pushing high up the field.
However, this allowed Urmston to be able to counter in greater numbers and that led to a goal to even things up.
With the score line level Rochdale felt like this game was there for the taking and threw everything at the Urmston defence. Eventually finding a way through, Close hit a wonderful strike from top right of the D to score the second goal for Rochdale and give them the lead back at 2-1.
Urmston were doing everything they could to break down the midfield and at one point two Rochdale players were shown a green card (sent off for two minutes).
Despite being temporarily down to nine men, Rochdale were dominant and earned a short corner.
This one resulted in a retake due to another foul in the D. The ball was injected by Graham Broadley to Imran Ansari who scored for the second time finding the far corner, 3-1 Rochdale.
With Rochdale back to full strength the play was flowing well but Urmston managed to claw a goal back to keep them in the game at 3-2. Rochdale however were not down
‘We wanted this win more than the Urmston players’
and out and continued the way they had been playing and started to use piercing balls into the D to the two forwards. One of the balls found its way to Broadley, who tapped the ball into the goal at the far post to give Rochdale a commanding lead 4-2 and a goal on his birthday.
Captain Dean Close said: “The gents played excellently all game and with having two games in one weekend it was always going to be tough especially against a team much higher than us in the league. On the day though the Rochdale players clearly wanted this win more than the Urmston players.”