Bravery behind victory
KEITH Hill hailed a brave performance from his players ar Roots Hall on Saturday, where Callum Camps’ late header secured a 2-1 win.
“From a game perspective, I thought the lads showed great honesty, a good appetite and a winning desire. I think we got our just rewards,” said Hill.
“There was a bravery within the performance and there were mistakes, but there’s going to be mistakes because we’re Rochdale AFC.
“We’re going to make mistakes and win games, and we’re going to make mistakes and lose games, like we did last week. But having made mistakes, the individual players recovered well and there wasn’t any drama on the pitch – I don’t like drama. I’ve got to make sure I get this squad back to a no drama attitude, and I thought we got as close as we possibly can to that type of performance.
“We were deservedly in front with Jordan Williams’ goal, but I thought we squandered too many chances.
“We have got to really focus in on the impact touch, the strike at goal which we seemed to rush at the last minute - too many times shots went over the goal. Really, with some of the players we’ve got, we watch them on the training pitch and they are very good, but they didn’t do it enough on the day.”
Five minutes before Camps’ winning header, the Shrimpers had equalised after a sustained period of pressure, but Dale responded superbly.
“Arguably they didn’t deserve to score the equalising goal and it could have knocked us and it could have rocked us. We’re in a situation within the game where we’ve got players running out of energy, not because they’re not fit enough, but some of them are very young and inexperienced at preserving their energy for 90 minutes, and I made my three substitutions.”