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DAGGERS DICTIONARY "Wordsworth" A player with an excellent reputation at other clubs who singularly fails to live up to it when he joins you and yet returns to form as soon as he leaves.

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On This Day

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Har Har Welcome to the Football League? by Hardy on 24/04/2007 It seems like not all of the football world is looking forward to the club's arrival in League 2 next season. Welcome to the Football League? While there were acres of congratulations for the Daggers promotion from all over on the message board after the Championship was finally clinched, it seems like not all of the football world is looking forward to the club's arrival in League 2 next season. In an item taken from the Rochdale Match Day Programme written before they played Macclesfield Town on Saturday, the author "Scrutator" harks back to the "good old days" of re-election when the dead men of the old Fourth Division, Rochdale most definitely among them, could muddle along in their own mire without the worry of actually having to improve to stay where they were. The item has been published in full on the Rochdale Rivals site here. Baloney anyone? In common with the claptrap that we have put up with from ex-Football League clubs in the main issue seems to be attendances and ramshackle grounds of most promoted clubs although Scrutator manages to throw in to the mix rural location "more suited to growing spuds". He definitely hasn't been to Dagenham then! Given that he obviously hasn't set foot in Dagenham, to then describe the ground as he does as being "a collection of sheds and corrugated iron all seemingly held together with string. It looks like a wash-house in downtown Bangkok!" is a little rich. Well mate, we have the requisite number of toilets for the Football League and we are coming to get you! He compares the ground unfavourably to Hereford too despite us never having had a game postponed due to the wind blowing the roof off our stand as I recall. He goes on to say that "The fans too have that non-league air about them. This is something that is extremely hard to note down on paper, but they behave in a different fashion to fans of established league clubs." Presumably that means having fun and being friendly. Lets stay like that as long as we can! The argument for a closed shop Football League has been long lost now, and harping back to it shows that Rochdale are one of the clubs that can see an inevitability that one day they will be sliding through the trapdoor to oblivion. But hang on... Oblivion? Surely not. Since two up, two down came into play four seasons ago returning to the Football League has become much more common than it was before and teams like Doncaster Rovers and Carlisle have taken the opportunity of gaining that second play off promotion spot and skipping straight through League Two to promotion. Teams coming up from the Conference going way back very rarely struggle, although Accrington have had a hard time this year. Even Boston United, who never should have gone up five seasons ago, have survived pretty comfortably up to this season, albeit having flirted with the drop every term at some point. The "Pub Team from Essex" is coming. We have won promotion by right, and by a minimum of eight points from a team that averages close on four times our attendance. The game of football is judged on how many goals you score not on how many bums you put on seats or how shiny your stands are. Long may it stay at least a semblance of a sporting contest not a complete exercise in economics. While money counts most definitely it is good for the game that teams like Manchester City, Nottingham Forest and Leeds United can slip as far as they have done, probably to return in time to the top of the game as City have. It is just as good for the game that Yeovil Town and Wycombe Wanderers can come from the ranks of non-league football and kick the comfortable old order in the backsides. So this guy Scrutator may well be right and we will struggle next season in League 2, we may even come back down first time around, but he cannot challenge our right to have a go. That was won fair and square on the football field. Finally, I had a brief look at Rochdale's glorious Football League record.  A total of six seasons spent outside the bottom division in over eighty years and three finishes of 92nd and bottom plus a few more bottom of the old Third Division North. Bloody marvellous, I can see exactly why you want re-election back! I know what the Daggers are about but can anyone tell me what the point of Rochdale is?