Fears campaign over for Devante
ROCHDALE head coach Jim Mcnulty is coming to terms with the prospect of losing striker Devante Rodney for the whole season.
The frontman featured in the opening game of the season but was sidelined with a viral infection for two and a half months.
He returned to the squad earlier this month, with Mcnulty accepting Rodney would have to be used sparingly.
However, the forward missed Saturday’s 4-3 derby defeat against Oldham Athletic at the Crown Oil Arena and after the game Mcnulty admitted the outlook didn’t look good for Rodney.
“It’s not great,” he explained.
“Dev came on the pitch for us at Hereford last week and – it’s not very nice to explain it explicitly – but he was going through some tough moments on the pitch.
“At the moment, he is unable to train and compete. He’s tried his best to come back, but he’s simply not able to be on the pitch for us at the moment.
“It’s tough for him and tough for us. If you take the main guy out of any team this season, they would be five places lower in the league than they are. We’ve been without Dev all season, the one player who the fans were so scared that we were going to lose.
“The way it looks like right now, we may go the whole season without Dev, I just don’t know. His situation is so up in the air and unknown. He can’t train, he can’t play, he’s tried to give his all, but he can’t do it.”
Tyrese Sinclair and Kyle Ferguson also picked up injuries in the loss to Oldham and were doubtful for Tuesday night’s home game against Gateshead. Mcnulty has been operating with a paper thin squad since the start of the campaign and injuries have started to take their toll.
“There’s a fear about Tyrese that it could be something serious, but you never know, we won’t know until Monday,” he said. “Kyle Ferguson we think has damaged a tendon in his groin, which isn’t good.
“It’s going to expose the wafer-thin nature of the squad, there’s no doubt about it.
“Every injury we get hurts my soul. The players are giving me everything, but we’re in a vulnerable state squad-wise.
“Everyone saw though that they will give their all, no matter what team we put out, whatever position they end up playing for us.”
Latics went two up with goals either side of the break before Kairo Mitchell and Jimmy Keohane pulled the home side level.
However, Hallam Hope immediately restored Oldham’s lead and James Norwood made it 4-2 on 72 minutes.
Keohane netted again to give Dale hope but the home side were unable to find an equaliser despite 16 minutes of time added on at the end, mainly due to fan-related incidents.
Mcnulty said the excitement of the game had been overshadowed by alleged racist abuse of Kwaku Oduroh.
“There were racist slurs at our young right back,” he said.
“It’s the first time he’s ever been exposed to that.
“Nothing is as big as that. That’s the single biggest thing.
“The game was absolute
carnage and there’s so much of it I can’t comprehend. I definitely need to see it again.
“It wasn’t just a football match, there were all sorts of events going on. Some were quite shameful and
overshadow what was an exciting game for the neutral.”
Mcnulty said he was proud of the way in which his players fought back twice, but admitted moments of weakness
had let them down.
He said: “It was an amazing effort and fight and I told them I will always commend them for their fight and although it sounds normal for football teams to have fight, it’s not. I played for twenty years and not every changing room I was in had fight all the time.
“We just showed a lack of control and weakness in parts of the game while Oldham showed the clout of the lucrative squad that they’ve got during the game in those same moments.
“If it came down to football and quality, we were right there. But maybe we just showed too many moments of weakness that we couldn’t recover from.”