WE'RE STILL STANDING: 36th time lucky for the league’s least eventful club?

The crucial Easter fixtures often shape a successful run-in, but this year each league seems to have one team already all but promoted. Newcastle and Norwich are well on their way in their respective divisions, but Rochdale in League 2 are the most interesting of the pace-setters for The Worm and other lower league buffs. For Dale have spent 36 years in the bottom tier of English football. Their desolate 89-year league history consists of one promotion (1969) and one relegation (1974) and they have never won a Championship. They are the archetypal Fourth Division club, synonymous with the basement of English football.

Manager Keith Hill was a centre-back with the club in the late 1990s and has been in charge at Spotland for 2 years, guiding the team to the play-offs in both seasons. Last year could have been better still were it not for a late fade, but their current position seems almost infallible; nine points clear of second place and twelve points ahead of the play-off places with eleven games to go. They are the best balanced team in the division; defensively solid, well run in the midfield and with a dynamic strike force in Chris Dagnell and Chris O’Grady who have 36 goals between them. Hill himself seems an honest and affable guy and is popular with his fellow managers. It will be hard to begrudge this Manchester club a belated moment in the sun. Now, you may ask me what Newcastle have ever won…

Comments

[The Worm]

Ah, Danny Baker. Still to be found on BBC Radio 5 on Saturday mornings (9-11) and downloadable from the BBC website. Well worth a listen, he digs out the amusing and interesting, recent highlights include "have you ever been fouled in real life?", tempting fate mid-match by shouting "nothing can go wrong now..." and this week the Seussian "Pele's sister Nelly".

[dupin]

Extraordinarily ordinary!

I see in the same division that second bottom Grimsby are the only side across the leagues to have matching home and away results - the team that are most indifferent to their fans?

Brings to mind an old Danny Baker 6-0-6 nugget, when searching for the dullest side one season - I think it was Shrewsbury Town - they had won, drawn and lost the same number of games; their GD was exactly the same home and away, and, the coup de grace, apparently all their first team players were 5'10!