Winter Sports
DALE’S Diary
Coping with dual sports is never easy but, with a new pitch, new equipment and ‘new’ assistant, Phil Collinson, Head Groundsman at Rochdale’s Spotland Stadium is winning the battle to retain grass coverage.
Laurence Gale MSc reports L
“Our most worrying time is at the end of the football season, when we have less than seven weeks until the next home fixture”
Phil Collinson, Head Groundsman, Rochdale FC
ike many a lower league football club, Rochdale have had a checkered history. Officially launched in 1907, their first ever Football League opposition came in the shape of Accrington Stanley on 27th August 1921, with the game finishing 6-3 in favour
of Rochdale. During the twenties, the club flirted with promotion on a number of occasions, without success, and it wasn’t until 1969 that they ventured up one division, under the management of Bob Stokoe, only to fall back in 1974. Indeed, it was only a couple of re- elections that saved them from dropping out of the Football League during the seventies, and they remain one of a handful of league sides that have never actually won any kind of trophy! However, they do have the distinction of playing in the final of the League Cup in 1962; the only bottom division team to have done so. The Dale, as they are affectionately nicknamed, were
thrown into turmoil in the eighties when Tommy Cannon - he of Cannon & Ball fame - was portrayed as the saviour of the club, only to appoint a new look board of directors that made a series of decisions deemed not to be in the club’s best interests. Cannon eventually resigned in 1988 after an Extraordinary General Meeting was called by shareholders but, behind him, he left a whole string of debts. After much financial wrangling, the previous board
were reinstalled and embarked on a crusade to get the good ship Dale back to financial security. They were helped considerably by Rochdale Hornets Rugby League Football Club, who bought a 45% share in their Spotland ground for an investment of £400,000. The Hornets had sold their Athletics Ground stadium to Morrisons supermarkets, and their move to the other side of the town ultimately saved the football club from extinction. Since the early 1980s, the Spotland Stadium has been home to both clubs.
The Dale finished the 2009-10 campaign in third place in League Two, winning promotion to League One, establishing themselves in the division the following season by finishing 9th. Head Groundsman is Phil Collinson, who is assisted by
Drew Duffy, a name that will be familiar to readers of the Pitchcare message board, for he was the first turfcare professional to benefit from our ‘Find Me A Job’ campaign. Indeed, it was Drew’s honest appraisal of his then work situation that prompted the campaign. The then seventeen-year-old Drew had been working
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