But with just 1700 turning up at Barnet at the weekend, including a sizeable percentage in the away end, you have to assume that the FA Cup is in grave danger of taking on board League Cup status with attendances down on League fixtures.

Fair enough, I'm sure Dale at home isn't the sort of FA Cup draw to get the Barnet supporters salivating but it would appear Cup fever is only something to appear when our clubs get drawn against sides with name players in them. If that's all the FA Cup has been reduced to, then it's a sad day for football.

Anyway, as to the match itself, and it will go down as a missed opportunity for Dale to have made the second round at the first attempt. Dale were the better side, seemingly had control of the game, yet the inability to keep a clean sheet since the Oldham game counted against us again and even had one or two nervy moments that we could have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

With Dale swapping and changing the side in recent weeks to maintain a freshness, it was arguably the strongest side put out to take a Barnet side who had overdosed on the Beechams in the run up to the game to ensure that the flu bug was not more than a runny nose.

The first half was pretty much devoid of incident. We had the benefit of the famous Barnet slope in the first half which has been pretty much been forgotten about since the Bees days as a non league giant killer, but we couldn't change that advantage into a goal.

We did manage to force a number of corners during that first period but none of them lead to us directly threatening the Barnet goal in a half where chances were rarer than supporters.

Barnet themselves didn't look like scoring either. In fact, for much of that first half, they seemed to be just making up the numbers as Dale dictated the bulk of the play winning the midfield battles, and the general consensus in the away end at half time was a feeling of surprise that we weren't winning.

But half time brought renewed vigour from the Dale team, and within a few minutes of the restart, Dale had taken the lead. A push from captain Gary Jones down the right wing saw a dangerous cross end up in the back of the net after being touched in. It wasn't the easiest to detect who got the final touch, and the team's reactions suggested that it had in fact been an own goal, as Jonah collected the bulk of the celebrations. Dagnall was given the credit but he didn't appear to claim it at the game.

To be honest, at that point it looked like job done. The home side didn't look capable of mounting anything like a push on our defences, and the prospect of an away win and a clean sheet to boot looked to be on the cards.

We picked up an injury midway through the second half when Nathan Stanton injured himself in a tackle which had the most spurious penalty claim since Phil Prosser gave us that handball against Southend.

Stanton was immediately declared as being unfit to continue by physio Andy Thorpe after some sideline treatment, but Stanton's exchange of opinions with the home fans brought enough energy for him to return for a brief spell back out on the pitch. Holness was to be his eventual replacement.

And then the unthinkable happened. A free kick was awarded to the home side from some distance, yet it picked up a nasty deflection landing smack bang at the feet of the home side's Yakubu who fired the ball through Sam Russell to give the Bees equilibrium in the cup tie.

For the following minutes, there was the merest hint from the home side that they could have gone on to win this game, but aided by a couple of subs (which saw Alfie miss out on playing for Dale for the first time since joining from Stockport), we took the game back to the opposition in the closing minutes and we came close to snatching it late on.

Mark Jones looked very dangerous. He seemed to be given all sorts of space and he nearly proved his reputation of only scoring great goals by hitting fire from 30 yards but the keeper had no trouble dealing with it.

The last throw of the dice saw Dagnall turn and shoot from the edge of the penalty box, and for the briefest of moments, I was there in the air ready to raise my arms and ready to celebrate another last second winner. It went wide.

So 1-1 it finished and Dale will have to do it all over again a week on Tuesday. With Barnet having a vastly superior away form to that what they have at home, Dale fans should be most wary at declaring the replay as being a mere formality. That's assuming it doesn't get postponed 17 times.