[Lord Snooty]

Rochdale v Huddersfield Town
The Emirates FA Cup 4th round
Saturday January 28th - 15:00 ko
at the Crown Oil Arena, Spotland

Huddersfield Town travel over the hills to Rochdale for an FA Cup 4th round match on Saturday afternoon. This is Town's first fourth round match for three years. That was a 0-1 home defeat to Charlton in 2014. The last time we won a fourth round match was the previous season when goals from Adam Clayton and Sean Scannell gave us a 2-1 replay victory at Leicester.
This season we beat Port Vale in the third round, but how did Rochdale get to this stage? They were somewhat fortunate to get through the first round, Callum Camps scoring an injury time equaliser at Maidstone to earn a replay, which they won 2-0, Steven Davies scoring both goals.
Second-half goals from Davies and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing gave them a 2-0 win up at Carlisle in the second round and then they travelled north again to Barrow and came away with the same scoreline in round three, Ian Henderson scoring both.
On Saturday, the Dale lost at home 0-4 to Oxford Utd. This was something of a major surprise as they had won their last ten home league matches.


A brief history of Rochdale AFC: To be blunt, they've never won xxxx all ...... literally. They must have the shortest honours board of all the clubs in the Football League. The outstanding feat of course, would be their League Cup runners up in 1962, the 2nd season of it's existence, losing 0-4 to Norwich over 2 legs. Apart from that, they have two Division 3 (North) runners up positions, when only the champions were promoted.
They have never reached the Championship but their highest ever league position was as recent as two seasons ago when they finished 8th in League One. On a more positive note though, since their election into the FL in 1921, they have never been relegated to what is now known as the National League.
They have reached the 4th division Play Offs on 3 occasions, losing to Rushden & Diamonds in 2002. Stockport in 2008 at Wembley, having beaten Darlington on penalties in the semi final. And then Gillingham beat them 2-1 on aggregate in 2009.

Promoted to League 1 in 2014

Head to Head




Town lead in the overall head to head with 12 wins to Rochdale's 2, with 10 draws.

We have met twice before in the FA Cup. In 1991/92 we played at Spotland and won 2-1 with goals from Iwan Roberts and Iffy Onuora. A few years prior to that, in 1988/89, we played out a 1-1 draw at Leeds Road, Andy May scoring for Town. The replay was a cup classic 4-3 Town win. Peter Withe, an own goal from O'Shaughanessy, Craig Maskell and Junior Bent getting the Town goals.
We last met at league level in League 1, our promotion season of 2011/12. Both games ended in 2-2 draws, with Lee Novak and Danny Ward scoring at Spotland and Ward again and Jordan Rhodes scoring at home.
The first time we played each other was when we were on our big slide down the league ladder in the 70s. It was 1973/74 and we drew 1-1 at Rochdale, but then beat them 5-0 at home with all five goals coming in a 2nd half blitz that gave us our biggest win of the season. Goals that day coming from Jimmy Lawson (2), Alan Gowling (2) and Phil Summerill.



So what's new at Spotland?

Managed nowadays by Keith Hill, in his 2nd spell in charge after he had a brief period away managing Barnsley. Apart from that one season at Oakwell, he has been Rochdale's manager since 2006, having previously played in defence for them on 154 occasions.
Under his stewardship, the club been reached the Play Offs twice, got promoted, relegated while he was away and then promoted again.

Notable players in their squad:- The most notable name is the goalkeeper Josh Lillis. Notable only for being the son of Town legend, Mark Lillis. He has been with the Dale for the last 4 seasons, having previously had 6 seasons at Scunthorpe and loan spells with Notts County and Grimsby.

The waste of talent that goes under the name of Donal McDermott has turned up in a Rochdale shirt. He, you will remember was the star of the Bournemouth team that we beat in the Play Offs the other year, so good that we signed him afterwards from his parent club, Man City. He turned out to be a right little twerp and since his release from Town and resurfacing at Spotland, he played for Dundalk, Salford City and Ramsbottom Utd.

One other Town connection currently with the Rochdale squad is classy midfielder of the Jacko/Bruce era, Chris Beech. He is Hill's number 2 and had previously had a short spell as caretaker manager in the season when Hill was at Barnsley. He scored 12 goals in 71 games for Town, all of them, my memory tells me, were classics.

Rochdale have made an addition to their squad this week, taking Joel Taylor on loan from Stoke City. The 20 year old plays at full back, but can also play as a winger.

Chris Beech

Line up for match v Oxford:

25 Logan
2 Rafferty
6 McGahey
4 McNulty
3 Tanser
24 Allen
27 Cannon
9 Andrew
10 Camps
11 Mendez-Laing
40 Henderson

Substitutes
5 Canavan
7 Vincenti
12 McDermott
16 Noble-Lazarus
21 Musangu
26 Owusu
28 Morley








Recent Form: Town are down to 5th in the Championship after the midweek results, with 49 points. Rochdale are 6th in League 1 with 45.

Last 6 matches:

Town 2-0 Ipswich
Sheff Weds 2-0 Town
Town 4-0 Port Vale (FA Cup)
Wigan 0-1 Town
Town 1-1 Blackburn
Town 2-1 Nottm Forest

Rochdale 0-4 Oxford
Southend 2-1 Rochdale
Barrow 0-2 Rochdale (FA Cup)
Walsall 0-2 Rochdale
Rochdale 2-1 Shrewsbury
Rochdale 3-0 Chesterfield

Donal McDermott