By Nathan Jackson
February 10 2005

The Imps travel to Spotland at the weekend to face a team who blame them for every single one of their problems. Rochdale blamed the Imps for not getting promoted a few years ago and will be looking for revenge as Lincoln must have made Rochdale lose at Cheltenham last weekend.

Who wants a nice quiet weekend in an area where the locals don't make a lot of noise at all but are generally sore losers if things aren't getting things their own way, yes, I am of course speaking of a trip to Spotland, the home of Rochdale AFC. Now, I would be about to write a fairly average report about Rochdale but no, a certain belief of their's pisses me off. 3 seasons ago, City were trying to avoid relegation whereas Rochdale were aiming for a playoff finish, much like they are now, they made the playoffs but missed out on automatic promotion by a single point, they went back during the season and blamed two draws against Lincoln as costing them promotion, now it may just be me but they drew 13 other games that season, why not accuse those teams of costing them promotion? Those 2 extra points against a single one of those teams would have seen them be automatically promoted but no, it has to be our fault that Rochdale WEREN'T GOOD ENOUGH throughout the entire season, it was Lincoln's fault. What makes this point even stupider is that you'd think that by the way they blamed us, that it was our fault they didn't win their playoff games against Rushden, now surely the ever mighty Rochdale could have beaten them but the wind hit the Lincoln Cathedral at just the wrong angle and effected a game nearly 100 miles away.

City go into Saturday's game pretty much with a full squad to choose from except for Peter Gain who is out suspended.

Most likely formation (Right to left)

Marriott

Bloomer        McAuley     McCombe      Morgan         Sandwith

Butcher             Toner

GTF          Yeo        Green

 

Ahh Rochdale, as you can probably tell from what I've written above, I don't have a fairly good opinion of Rochdale but this season they are doing reasonably well and have an outside change of promotion. They have won 11 of their 30 games with 9 draws and 10 defeats, those 10 defeats obvious the fault of someone farting in Lincoln when Dale were playing away at Bristol Rovers.

They have Gary Jones and Neil Edwards both out injured through miscellanious injuries caused by Keith Alexander wanting a cup of coffee instead of tea and Wayne Evans is suspended after someone sneezing in the crowd at Sincil Bank caused him to suddenly foul someone, but of course, it wasn't his fault was it.

 

City have recent history on their side. The sides met in October when the teams played out a 1-1 draw with Dale being one of the worst sides to play at Sincil Bank this season, the reason I say history is on our side is because last season, Dale drew 1-1 at Sincil Bank but then City won 3-0 at Spotland thanks to a double strike from GTF and a thunderbolt from Yeo.