Who says winter breaks in football don’t work?
With Saturdays increasingly becoming a day for Tesco, B&Q and Jeff Stellling, it was rather pleasant to start the new year back on semi-familiar territory, and after reminding ourselves about which kit colour we play in, we reacquainted ourselves with football.
We were back to 4-3-3 for this game, with many a eyebrow raised at the line up. Akpa Akpro was given a rare start following his good form in our last game which was about two months ago, and fresh from signing his contract, Matty Done was also given a first team opportunity. Most surprising of all was a return to first team action for Joe Widdowson, with TK having to make do with a spot on the bench, and no sign anywhere of Nicky Adams.
It’s seems almost inconceivable that this was our first home game against Tranmere in almost 22 years. Games against them were a staple fixture and many a youthful afternoon was spent uttering anti-Scouse drivel through the old Willbutts Lane separating fence. Ah such memories.
On a pitch looking far better than it had any right to, surrounded with a white border Dale got underway kicking towards the Pearl Street end of the ground, and the early exchanges offered up plenty of encouragement for the Dale supporters in a poor crowd.
The signs were good, and it was noticeable that we seemed to be able move past the visitors with ease, with JLAA, Widdowson and Wiseman all showing an ability to leave their opponent for dead, and early breakthrough was expected. It was also clear that there was a real lack of belief between the Tranny keeper and his defence, with any returns to him usually resulting in panic stations.
It was no surprise to anyone when Dale took a deserved lead, with the only surprising element that it had took so long to come against a side which had offered nothing from an attacking point of view.
In another world, Marlon Broomes could have been lining up for Dale this afternoon. For if he had impressed enough during his trial at the start of the 2009-10 promotion season, then it could have been him alongside Nathan Stanton for all of the last campaign. That lad Craig we have at the back doesn’t know how lucky he is.
As it is, Broomes saw O’Grady completely get the better of him in the Tranmere penalty box, dragging last season’s top scorer down with him, and there was little option other than for Boyesen to award a spot kick for Dale and a red card for Broomes. Gary Jones did what he does so well, and despatched the penalty with ease to give Dale the lead.
It may simply be my imagination, but despite all the wonderments that we’ve been treated to under Hillcroft, playing against ten men remains something of a poisoned chalice for Dale, and all common sense about how a poor looking Tranmere side would be put to the sword for the remainder of the game went straight out of the window. We just don’t seem to do particularly well when up against ten men.
It wasn’t quite straight away, but the visitors having recovered from the blow of losing the former Dale trialist, suddenly realised that they could continue to compete and their confidence grew the longer the game went on, and the contest remained very much on.
We continued to be a threat but as half time approached, discussions were that the management would probably be somewhat disappointed at half time that we hadn’t put the game beyond Tranmere. After all, we know how slender a one goal lead can be.
Well if we didn’t, we soon did, as Tranmere equalised just before the break. With what started off looking like an innocuous attack that Holness was struggling to deal with, it soon turned into calamity stations for Dale as Tranmere swarmed into our penalty area smelling blood. Our inability to clear led to shots reigning in until former Shrewsbury loanee Joss Labadie fired it narrowly to the right of Josh Lillis.
But the disappointment didn’t last too long, as we found ourselves leading again shortly before half time. Think Gazza against Scotland, think Matt Le Tissier against Newcastle, think Dale right back Scott Wiseman. A punishing run down the right wing just kept on going on and on, before chipping the ball over the head of one defender in the same style as the aforementioned midfield maestros, before squaring the ball to an onrushing Gary Jones who grabbed the goal. A stunning twelve goals for the season now for Jonah, but the plaudits most certainly went to Wiseman for this goal.
The second half started well enough for Dale, with Chris O’Grady a regular threat to the Tranmere backline. It was like watching O’Grady at his peak from last season, as he turned defenders left right and centre, before doing that trademark cutting in from the left, beating his defender and firing low. The Tranmere keeper did very well to prevent O’Grady doubling our advantage following one such move.
But as with the first half, Tranmere continue to show that they weren’t just going to make up the numbers and accept their role as the losing side. They made things very difficult for ourselves, and we were far from being at our best.
Our biggest issue was that we just couldn’t retain possession. Again, common sense would state that against the tiring ten men of Tranmere, we should have been able to knock the ball about for fun, and toy with them for the remainder of the afternoon. But we could rarely string two passes together and that allowed the visitors to dictate play for long periods of the second half.
Dale made a change with Bobby Grant on for JLAA. The former Grimby man’s time on the pitch was on borrowed time after he failed to chase down a ball in front of the Dale dugout, but his replacement could have been following him off the field seconds after coming on.
We’ll need replays to get to the bottom of what actually happened, but Grant was involved in an incident with the veteran Tranmere central defender Ian Goodison. There’d been a coming together between the two, and Goodison who was sent off against Dale eleven seasons earlier (coincidentally another game in which Gary Jones scored a brace) reacted very angrily to whatever had gone on, starting on the Scunthorpe loanee.
Gut feeling suggested that the ref played the common sense card. Goodison’s action was certainly worthy of a red card, but perhaps having not seen what had incensed him in the first place, the referee opted that a yellow card to each player was the best course of action.
Said incident only helped to encourage the visitors and by the time of their equaliser, you knew that such a goal was coming. They had been getting closer and closer and despite their numerical disadvantage, they found space easy to come by and as the cliché goes, you’d have never have guessed which of the two sides were down to ten men at this point.
After a narrow escape where the ball was rifled into the side netting, they were awarded the chance to get back on level terms from the penalty spot. Jason Kennedy bundled over the Rovers goalscorer Labadie at the edge of the penalty box, and Boyesen had no hesitation in awarding the spot kick. Another veteran player, Ian Thomas Moore took the spot kick and despite a great attempt by Lillis, he’d scored the equaliser at a ground where his Dad spent time playing back in the 80’s.
I’ll confess at this point to worrying whether we should be happy with a point, as with the Tranmere heads up, they were probably the favourites to win, despite the ten men. But within two minutes of scoresheet equilibrium, we scored again with what proved to be the winning goal.
With a corner from the main stand side of the ground, loanee Bobby Grant reacted the fastest to produce a bullet header that gave the Rovers keeper no chance at all. Grant had offered little up until the goal having come off the bench, but there are far worse criticisms of a player than “he did nothing but score”.
The game should have been put beyond the reaches of our Merseyside rivals, after Gary Jones was given the ball following another poor kick from the teenage Tranmere goalkeeper. The chance was on for Jonah’s first ever Dale hat trick with the keeper way out of position, but he chose to put the team first and played in Joey Thompson who was in a far better position. Unfortunately for Jonah, Joey and those biting fingernails in the Dale parts of the ground, Thompson made a mess of his chance and nothing came from it.
But fortunately for us, it wasn’t something that we could back to regret as after what can only be described as a miserly three minutes of additional time by referee Boyesen, we managed to hold on for just our second win since September with what could turn out to be three of the most crucial points that we’ll pick up all season.
It was definitely an afternoon to chalk down as “well at least we got the three points”, and whilst the visiting Tranmere supporters will undoubtedly feel aggrieved at the defeat, we’ve all been on the other side of games like this. Besides, we’d shown twice during this game that if they’d managed to grab another goal, we’d have just gone straight down the other end and regain the lead so what were we worrying for?
There were a certain irony that all three goals we scored were “scouse” goals, and you would have to assume that at some stage Birkhenhead born Gary Jones must have come under the Tranmere radar only for them to decide not to bother with him.
So three points is three points and all that, and we get the new year off to the perfect start. It might not have been the perfect display, it might not have been the most attractive display, but it was a winning display, and we’d have chosen that above anything else offered.