RUFC – Tonge ‘we don’t need to play ugly’

Rotherham United midfielder, Dale Tonge says that the Millers have not always been good at the ‘ugly’ side of football but doesn’t feel that they’ve had to play it.

‘We can play the pretty stuff,’ the twenty-three year old told Yorkshire Sport, ‘and we’ve not had to play the ugly stuff because we know we can beat teams by playing football.’

The Millers have only let in nine league goals so far in 2009, which includes five clean sheets and Tonge says, ‘As a team we are defending really well and the work we’ve done with the gaffer and his staff has come to fruition. It was particularly good when we went to Wycombe, who were then top of the table, and keeping a clean sheet. In fairness they never looked like scoring against us. And we went and got a hard fought win at Lincoln. At the start of the season we were struggling against lesser teams so it’s good to see that we are grinding out some results now.’

With postponements due to bad pitches and bad weather, Rotherham find themselves with a very full schedule throughout March and into April, playing Tuesday-Saturday games every week. ‘We’ve just got to get our heads around it and get on with it,’ Tonge said. ‘We know we have a lot of games in hand and if we can get around forty-five points then we should be safe. It was a really good feeling when we managed to get above Grimsby and its good going into games now knowing that we could go above this team today. It`s not exactly the case of putting two fingers up at the league but more a case of ‘you can keep putting us down but we will keep going.`

‘I am enjoying my football here but I think you do when you are playing. I am out of contract at the end of the season and we will have to wait and see what happens and see if the club still wants me. Hopefully there will be an offer sooner rather than later and we`ll take it from there.`

In my humble opinion, Dale Tonge must be one of the first names on the team sheet at the moment – he`s been playing some good football and battling away well and the fans singing his name at recent away games must sound good to his ears.