Dale derby day disciplinarians
JOSH Lillis cited the discipline that runs through the Rochdale squad as one of the key factors in Saturday’s derby day victory against Bury.
The Shakers were guilty of losing their heads after a dubious penalty decision went against them and had five men booked and two sent off in a keenly contested game.
Ian Henderson converted the 38th minute spot kick and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing sealed the points with a 75th minute strike.
And in the face of some hefty challenges throughout, Dale kept their cool far better than David Flitcroft’s men.
“We’d spoken about Bury and how they set up but it had been no different to any other training week,” said Lillis.
“We started off really well and possibly played the occasion a little bit better than they did. Obviously they lost their discipline a little bit and I’m sure they will be disappointed at that but we kept ours.
“Discipline is all down to what you do on the training ground and having discipline in yourself as well away from the club.
“The lads are brilliant, there’s no bad eggs among us, and on the training pitch we expect and demand everything off each other and once we’re off the pitch there is a good team spirit and time for a laugh and a joke.”
The result made it six straight League One victories for Keith Hill’s men, a run of form that has seen them rise from the bottom of the table up to fifth in the space of five weeks.
“Our start to the season wasn’t ideal, we had a few new players who were settling in and to come back from that kind of start just shows the quality that we’ve got in the squad,” said Lillis.
“If you look back to those first few games it was a case of individual mistakes, myself included, rather than team mistakes and when you lose a couple of games at the start of the season you start to put pressure on yourself to get that first win.
“It did take us a little bit of time and I think teams were probably thinking ‘here we go, we’ve caught Rochdale at a good time’. But we’ve turned that round.
“As you can imagine, winning games has just seen team spirit soar and the lads just keep coming in on a Monday buzzing and ready to go again.
“It’s not as if we’ve changed that much since the start of the season, we probably didn’t get the rub of the green in the first few games.
“But we have worked that little bit harder on the training pitch and the run of games we’ve been on just breeds confidence.”