23-24 season….our best season ever 08:36 - Jun 2 with 1819 views | pioneer | 1923-24 that is. Yes next season will be 100 years since we missed promotion to the second tier by a whisker. We finished second in Division 3 north,1 point behind champions Wolves, with only the top team promoted to Division 2 . We won more games than Wolves and the two games between in February and March both finished scoreless despite the two teams having scored 136 goals between in the rest of the season. Dales final record was won 25 drawn 12 lost 5. The five losses were all away, to Wigan , Bradford Park Avenue, Ashington, Grimsby and Tranmere. The Tranmere game was originally played on April 10 but was abandoned with the score 2-2. It was replayed on April 28 the penultimate game of the season with Tranmere winning 2-1. That took Dale to the last game of the season two points behind Wolves. Wolves were playing at Tranmere while Dale were at home to Accrington Stanley. Dale won 4-1 but wolves scraped another 0-0 draw and were champions. Wolves would have need to lose 6-0 for Dale to have gone up on goal.average This is the closest we ever got to second tier football in our 102 years in the football league. Dale finished runners up again three years later but were 5 points behind champions Stoke City ( in an era of two points for a win). | ![](/images/avatars/0.gif) | | | ![](/images/icons/ignore-user.png) |
23-24 season….our best season ever on 11:26 - Jun 2 with 1671 views | D_Alien | Not sure if that's the season in question, but my dad (who was a lad at that time) maintained he'd heard that the board had instructed the manager and players not to win a game which would potentially have meant promotion to the second tier, on the basis they just couldn't afford to survive in the higher league and would've gone bankrupt | ![](/images/avatars/1219.gif) |
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23-24 season….our best season ever on 12:55 - Jun 2 with 1625 views | SuddenLad |
23-24 season….our best season ever on 11:26 - Jun 2 by D_Alien | Not sure if that's the season in question, but my dad (who was a lad at that time) maintained he'd heard that the board had instructed the manager and players not to win a game which would potentially have meant promotion to the second tier, on the basis they just couldn't afford to survive in the higher league and would've gone bankrupt |
A story oft repeated about other seasons down the decades. | ![](/images/avatars/5895.gif) |
| “It is easier to fool people, than to convince them that they have been fooled†|
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