RUFC – View From The Opposition – Rochdale

Rotherham United Manager Paul Warne was really pleased with his sides second away win of the season on Saturday saying the loudness of the travelling fans helped.

But Rochdale Manager Keith Hill wasn’t that impressed with his side telling Rochdale’s Official Site that his team aren’t ‘playing goal scoring’.

Speaking after Rotherham’s one-nil win, Hill said, ‘We aren`t being effective enough in front of goal and it`s spoiling performances because there`s not an awful lot wrong with the performance.

‘Their goal is a catalogue of mini negative mistakes or a negative bounce. That`s whether it`s a free-kick or not, whether or not the free-kick is then going out of play as it`s sent in, so it`s now a corner instead of a goal-kick, and then it`s just a negative rhythm that we didn`t put our positive stamp on.

‘I think we dealt with Kieffer Moore pretty well.’

Mr Hill then went on to imply that our players were ‘play acting’ to get free-kicks, saying, ‘I think more than forty percent of the free-kicks that were given away were play acting from the opponents. Is it sportsmanship or gamesmanship? I`m OK with it being gamesmanship, but what I don`t expect is the referee not to see it as gamesmanship. I think he got more than a few calls wrong, because he was falling for the players` gamesmanship rather than sportsmanship.’

Mr Hill, as he usually is, seems to be at a different game to me. I don’t think Warney will mention it but all their players seem to be under instructions to stop the Millers players at any cost. Kieffer Moore and Ryan Williams particularly came in for some attention from the Dale defenders – and, at the risk of sounding very 1970’s dirty tactics were being used.

Of course, Mr Hill is entitled to his opinion, although I think around a thousand people from Rotherham won’t agree with it.





Vital Rotherham on:

Vital Rotherham on: