Was there ever any doubt whatsoever that the chant of "You're going down with the Torquay" would be echoing from the away end after Chris Dagnall popped up with a late equaliser to ease our fears of relegation?

Make no mistake, this was the first game in the Rochdale relegation battle. There were almost twice as many supporters making the journey that had gone the similar distance to Northampton last week. The scenes in the away end provoked by the late equaliser by Dagnall was clearly one of supporters desperate for any point we could get our hands on. It seemed everyone in the away end was aware of the scores of all the other sides down at the bottom, which didn't help matters as the afternoon got gloomier and gloomier.

 It was just a shame, that there was nothing on the pitch to suggest that we were battling against anything at all. For some reason, the performance reminded me of that old Kit Kat advert from the 80's where some band plays their demo tape to a record company exec, and he starts ripping them to pieces, saying they can't sing, they can't dance, they look awful......

Because the Dale performance today (and of late) was not a million miles off this. We couldn't defend, we had no midfield and we looked hopeless up front. Apart from that, it was a great performance. We just couldn't do the basics at all.

But the big issue for me was that at no stage during the afternoon did we play as a team. Rushden did throughout and caused us problems as a result. But we never did. Our players never worked off the ball to help out a fellow team mate, and there was so many occasions where we had a players getting into great positions but then had nothing but red shirts in that half of the pitch. If you cannot play as a team, then what hope is there?

You take the defence, they had Drewe Broughton who may be more thug than footballer, but he's a handful and you never get an easy game against him. They also had this very nippy lad along side called Simeon Jackson. Now it would seem common sense to stick Griffiths on Broughton and Jackson on their Jackson. But far too often this role was reversed and it was no surprise to see Griff get dicked for pace and Jackson outmuscled.

First half was pretty even, but not in a good way. It was a great surface to play on but we seemed content to launch hopeful balls forward at every opportunity which were dealt with ease by the Rushden defence. Occasionally, it worked to our advantage but aside from a blocked Ernie Cooksey header, we never threatened at all.

Other than that, referee Mick Fletcher seemed to be playing the old pals act, refereeing with a time when a friendly word was all that was ever needed. The aforementioned Broughton was his usual self, and had lashed out at Dale players on six occasions before Fletcher decided that he required a yellow card. In the mean time, we had elbows, shoves and hands in the face as part of our entertainment.

They had a goal disallowed much to everyone's relief. Their striker Jackson broke through our back line and fired a low shot which then seemed to play pinball wizard between the post and Gilks' back before rebounding to Broughton who's diving header saw much celebration amongst the home support, but not half as much celebration as the linesman got from the away support for raising his flag for offside. No idea whether it was the right decision or not.

We also had the most obvious red card that anyone has ever seen. Chris Dagnall looked lively and it had been shown that when we got the ball and ran at the Rushden players with the ball at our feet, we made great inroads. On one such move, Dagnall was very cynically chopped to the floor with a clear run all the way to the goal ahead of him. I don't think anyone even anticipated there being a chance of a yellow card being shown.

Half time came with Dale fans huddled around for a view of the TV with Jeff Stelling telling us that every team below us was winning, or at least that's how it felt. Cheers Jeff. For some reason, I kept watching as if the results were going to change during the break and everything would be alright again. If only.

Not long after it we had our best chance so far of the entire game. Dagnall was causing all sorts of problems with his pace and he pulled the ball back to Rickie Lambert who did everything right in keeping the ball down in what felt like just a tap in. Fortunately for the home side, one of their defenders hurled himself at the ball and blocking it from going in. Excellent defending.

But don't start thinking this was one way traffic. Striker Jackson for Diamonds seemed to have identical chances within a short space of time. On both occasions, he broke well clear of the defence cutting in from his right hand side. The first he blasted well over the bar, whilst the other just trickled wide. Warning shots that were never heeded.

Jackson again causing bother had a great effort saved by Gilks, only for the rebound to go to Broughton who finished off with ease. There's very few players that I would say that I actually dislike but he most certainly is one of them. He's not even in the "Well I'd love him if he played for us" category. He's just a nasty player and it was made all the worse that it was him who put Rushden into the lead.

The goal saw a change in the Dale team, which was about to happen anyway, with Christie coming on to replace the ineffective Kitchen. An attacking move on paper, but this change actually saw us become less threatening. Whether this was down to the tactics or heads dropping because of the goal, but for the rest of the game we played like which knew it was heading for the Conference and had accepted it. We were hardly brilliant beforehand, but we became significantly worse after it.

It was just dire stuff and seemed to be pretty much a case of waiting round for Rushden to increase their lead. We offered nothing, and even when it looked like we had a sniff of something, we found our own players running into each other. Lambert increasingly went looking to get the ball to try and do something about it himself but just found no support or chance to do anything with it.

And then the unthinkable happened. Three minutes into the allotted three minutes of injury time, and Dagnall jinked his way around his marker and was given the chance to repeat what he was denied in the first half by the foul. He had time as he worked his way into the box and fired past the Rushden keeper to bring out the much clichéd "Get Out of Jail Free Card".

The goal was far from deserved but at 16:52 on the geet big Rushden scoreboard, I don't think anyone really cared, and it was enough to see the players get a far from deserved ovation from the away support at the final whistle and a few reminders about Torquay to the home support.

It was a goal which may just go a long, long way to ensure that we're playing League Football. Who'd have dreamt that we'd be so desperate for a fixture list with the likes of Lincoln, Macclesfield and Accrington on it?

Photo: Action Images

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