Although technically the home side, Dale won away at high flying Second Division side Stoke City, to reach the third round of the prestigious AutoWindscreen Shield.  

Although technically the home side, Dale won away at high flying Second Division side Stoke City, to reach the third round of the prestigious AutoWindscreen Shield. The win was very much against the odds given the respective league positions of both sides.

On the fifth time of trying this game finally got started with many Dale fans singing "We're supposed to be at home", and would you believe it? Just three days after Dale lost at home to a side who are struggling to stay in the football league, we go and beat one of the promotion contenders in the division above. Now that sums Dale up. Now that is probably a little unfair, as Dale were full value for their win, and thoroughly deserved it.

The first five minutes was like some sort of dream. Off the top of my head, I can't remember Dale scoring a goal this season within the first ten minutes. To score two within the first four minutes was fantasy football at the very least.
I have noticed that a lot of reports begin saying that Dale started well(eternal optimist I'm afraid), but this time they really did. Within a minute, with a few Dale fans still outside, Holt controlled a long ball on his chest, laying it off to Andy Morris, who turned and curled the ball around a couple of defenders into the back of the net.

A couple of minutes later we were in dreamland. The ball was passed out to the left hand touchline. The Stoke defenders played the offside trap on Morris, but he was running backwards into an offside position, leaving Andy Barlow to run on to the ball in acres of space, who crossed the ball into Holt who put Dale two goals up for only the third time this season.

In the next few minutes, you could hear several mobile phones ring in the Dale end, to check whether the score on Teletext was real. You bet it was. But from now on, one of the main focus's for Dale fan was the clock on the electronic scoreboard to the right hand side, and how many minutes it was to go.

As we did against Brentford, Dale were able to sit back and to play on the break. They defended superbly, and we looked very comfortable indeed. Stoke only had one chance in the first half which tested our keeper, which was a cracking, hard shot from the edge of the box,, which forced Edwards to produce yet another world class save. The save was made all the better by the wicked curl at the last minute.

That was Stoke's last chance of the first half and the last real moment of the first half, other than some stupid refereeing decisions. Holt was brought down by the last man. No card. Peakey took the free card, yellow card for taking it too quickly. And they call it the perfect game.

The second half was just the same as the first (except Dale scoring twice). We defended superbly and looked dangerous on the break. They never threatened at all until their goal. All efforts went straight at Edwards who never looked in danger of conceding a goal.

I have no idea how they scored, and to be honest I couldn't care less. They did score a CONSOLATION, but Dale held out to get a worthy victory against a decent team.

The only down side of the night was the appalling behaviour of the Stoke stewards. With a travelling contingent of approx. 150, there was 33 stewards. They spent a great deal of time telling the very back row of the stand to sit down. One Dale fan was thrown out for making a sarcastic comment that the corrugated iron behind them could not see. The bully tactics of the stewards piled in, and lifted the Dale fan, knocking several people including my good self to the side as they did that. The Dale fan was chucked out, this was all despite the fact that there was about ten Stoke fans in the Dale end at kick off. They were transferred to another section. The Stoke fans were stood up all round the ground. The excuse of only following orders is an easy one. The only bright side was the amusing sight of Dale fans who were not allowed to stand up, crawling on hands and knees to the refreshment bar at half time.

Dale: Edwards, Jones, Barlow (Sparrow), Hill (Bayliss), Monington, Farrell, Carden, Painter, Morris, Peake, Holt. 

Photo: Action Images

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