Southend end game for Dale
ROCHDALE draw a line under their first season in the Vanarama National League today when they take on Southend United at Roots Hall.
Today’s opponents have experienced no end of problems off the field; this week saw a winding up petition adjourned for four weeks to allow time for a sale of the club to go through.
On the pitch, however, they are unbeaten since mid-february and have won four of their last five games. It promises to be a tough test for Mcnulty’s men, who head into the game on the back of four successive draws, the latest of which came in Tuesday’s stalemate against a Boreham Wood side fighting for National League survival.
“I thought we pushed and pushed all night and really controlled and dominated the game,” said Mcnulty after the goalless draw.
“We controlled the game almost in its entirety and I don’t say that with any degree of arrogance because Boreham wood are obviously in a desperate situation, a relegation dogfight and they were scared to give up anything.
“I know from when we’ve been in relegation fights in years gone how that fear and that desperation to survive transcends into energy in the performance.
“Obviously we’ve got nothing to play for, something I was cautious of guarding against and trying to bring an edge to the game despite the fact we’ve got nothing in terms of a league table to actually fight for. It was important that we still fought because if you look at Boreham Wood’s last two games Greg and and since the news that Luke Garrard’s parting ways with the club at the end of the year, there’s been a freeness and a freshness to their last two performances, a 7-0 aggregate win! They’ve demolished teams 4-0 and 3-0 and they’ve looked really powerful, really dangerous, really competitive.
“I knew they would be that against us but I thought we had to be very, very good with the ball. Stuff that looked very simple and very basic, I can promise you isn’t on that pitch against big competitive guys fighting for the lives.
“There’s a lot of stuff that looks like maybe you want a bit more, the crowd might want a bit more, but they have to be patient they have to do basic skills really, really well to try and get us into the part of the pitch that we could maybe have chances from.
“We did all that really well we handled Boreham Wood’s attacking element really well because they are a big, robust side and difficult to handle.
“We managed to move the ball all the way up the pitch and I just think when we got round the edge of their box we didn’t get enough purchase for the amount of ball control and domination and teritory that we had.
“But fair play to Boreham Wood, they more or less played from the halfway line and they suffered all night.
“My honest opinion was that if they were going to continue playing in their own half and give up that much ball, I thought they were going to pay for that. I thought we’d open them up and there were some moments where we did open them up – but we didn’t get the ball into the net, so the first goal was an elusive one.
“It takes our our run of home games now without a loss to seven, which for the last four years of this football club if you’d have ever said we’d go seven unbeaten at home at home you wouldn’t have believed it.
“The atmosphere at home has never given us a chance to even get any sort of run like that, so I think our first season in the National League, all things being considered, the fact is we’ve stayed up in in relative comfort.
“There’s a lot of feelings in my mind, not just about the game but about the season as a whole.
“We showed a reasonable version of ourselves tonight, we just didn’t get a win.”