Rochdale's winning run continued further as they beat Conference side Stevenage Borough in the FA Cup second round. Another FA Cup brace for Grant Holt secured a 2-0 win and a 3rd round match away at Charlton Athletic.

It was FA Cup time again as Dale travelled down to Stevenage Borough of the Conference with hopes of a big team in the next round should we progress and we got our wishes as Dale won the game 2-0 thanks to two more goals from Grant Holt and we have Charlton Athletic away in the next round.

Steve Parkin decided to stick with the same team that saw off Boston United 2-0 in the league last week   Matt Gilks remained in net, we had a back four of Wayne Evans, Gareth Griffiths, Greg Heald and Tony Gallimore with Jamie Clarke, Ernie Cooksey and Gary Jones playing midfield with Leo Bertos playing an attacking right wing role with Grant Holt and Paul Tait up front.  On the bench was Neil Edwards, Alan Goodall, Scott Warner, Leighton McGivern and Taiwo Atieno.

Stevenage may well be a Conference side but a few players had a the attributes that you see in the Premiership on a regular basis, especially from players such as Manchester United's Christiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney and Arsenal's Robert Pires.  No, I don't mean dazzling skill with tricks galore, I don't mean the gloves they where because they are too cold (awww) and I certainly don't mean the wages.  I mean the fact they can totally con the referee with diving that would be in contention for medals in the Olympics and early on in the game they nearly won a penalty through it but it was just outside the box when Quailey went looking for a penalty when about a foot away from Greg Heald.  Nothing came from the free kick though fortunately.

With nearly 20 minutes gone, Stevenage were awarded a freekick which Gregory took but it was well dealt with by Matt Gilks and the game remained level.

Shortly after that and it looked like Dale should have had a penalty.  Paul Tait was causing problems and got beyond the defender and tried to take the ball round the keeper before being brought down by Woodman.  The referee, Mr Singh was having none of it and waved away Tait's appeal.

Ernie Cooksey had a chance to put the Dale ahead midway through the half when he got a shot away that ended up being pretty harmless.

Dale's leading marksman had an effort just before the break when he had a shot from the edge of the area that went wide of the far post and a poor half ended with no further action.

The second half was much better from a Dale perspective and they came out and took the game to the non-leaguers.

With nearly 5 minutes of the half gone though, Gary Jones seemed to be struggling with his foot again and despite indicating he was ok, was brought off and replaced by Scott Warner.

Not long after, Stevenage went very close to opening the scoring and lets just say there were a couple of relieved yet worried lads who had put "a bit" of money on Dale to win.  Dannie Bulman came racing into the box and ran onto a pass but his effort nestled into the side netting rather than the inside of the post.

It was the last chance the home side had to be fair and from then on Dale showed they were a better side than Stevenage and with just over an hour gone the visitors almost found themselves ahead when Leo Bertos smashed a ball against the crossbar and just a few minutes later, Leo Bertos set up goal number one for Dale.  A shot from the Kiwi was parried by Woodman in the Boro goal and the ball came out to the prolific Grant Holt who met it with a diving header to make it 1-0 to Dale.

Holt was showing why many Dale fans are comparing him to Sir Reg Jenkins and was really taking the game to Stevenage who were really struggling to deal with him now and he had a couple of chances to make it 2-0 with about 15 minutes left.  Ernie Cooksey fed a ball through to him in a dangerous area and the keeper saved.  Shortly after that he got the ball in another dangerous area and curled it past the keeper and the ball was looking certain to go in, to the point where Holt was running off to celebrate, that was until the ball hit the inside of the post and came out.  Had Holt not ran off celebrating, he probably could have got to the rebound.

He was at it again two minutes later when he received the ball from Cooksey again, this time though, his shot ballooned over the bar.

Dale had yet another chance and you don't really need any clues as to who it fell to.  The boy Holt skipped past two defenders Paddy style and shot goalwards but his shot took a deflection to take it past the near post resulting in a corner that brought about a chance for Paul Tait.  Jamie Clarke's corner was met by Tait but his header was turned over the bar by Woodman.

With about 87 minutes gone, Stevenage were reduced to 10 men.  Leo Bertos showed us what he can do and what we want to see more of from him when he raced forward with the ball beating one player then knocking the ball past the on-coming Woodman and looked to run onto the ball with an open net but he was brought down by the former Oxford keeper and the only option for the referee was to give Woodman his marching orders.  Stevenage had already used all of their subs and they had to shove an outfield player in net.

Any chance that Stevenage had of getting back into the game went with that red card and Dale wrapped the game up a couple of minutes later when Holt scored his second of the game and his 14th of the season.  Jamie Clarke broke forward and Stevenage were short in defence having pushed men forward and he fed in Holt, he beat his marker with ease and smashed the ball into the bottom corner with his left peg.  The crowd were certainly in jubilant mood when it went in with "Same old Holty, always scoring" ringing out from the away end along with a couple of festive songs!

The game ended 2-0 and Dale progressed to round 3 of the FA Cup and a tie against Alan Curbishley's Charlton Athletic at The Valley on January 8th!

Player Ratings:

Matt Gilks 7 Made a couple of decent saves but overall not really troubled

Wayne Evans 7 Defended very well though his distribution was a little off

Tony Gallimore 7 Played well, defended well when he needed to

Greg Heald 7 He and Griff were very solid and kept them quiet for the most part

Gareth Griffiths 7 See Greg Heald

Jamie Clarke 7 Quiet first half but came to life in the second

Ernie Cooksey 7 Poor in the first half but excellent in the second

Gary Jones 6 Very quiet in the first half and went off injured early in the second

Leo Bertos 7 Caused the Stevenage defenders a lot of problems, especially in the second half

Paul Tait 7 Played well and deserved a goal but it never came unfortunately

GRANT HOLT 8 Superb, second half especially!  Same old Holty, always scoring!

Sub:  

Scott Warner 7 Did very well when he came on I thought and battled very well

Photo: Action Images

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