Manager Keith Hill spoke to Dale PlayerHD following Rochdale’s entertaining 1-1 draw with Scunthorpe United...
Dale were excellent, particularly in the second half, and had chances to win the game.
Hill is pleased with the performance and believes his side did enough to take maximum points.
“I think the second half was a three point performance.
“I thought we were excellent and I thought we were excellent in the first half with the way that we started.
“It’s difficult to gauge when you’ve had that game called off [Dale's Boxing Day fixture v Crewe Alex] because when you have a game called off it can turn into negative energy. When you’ve actually prepared everything for the game and then it's taken away, then the energy can almost implode on itself, but I was really pleased with the way we started.
“It’s a really tight pitch, probably one of the tightest in the league, and for me, it’s a centre-halves pitch. The game was very physical, especially in the first half, but when the game opened up in the second half, particularly in the last 20 minutes, I thought there was only one team going to win it.
“Having said that, they [Scunthorpe] quite easily could have won it with Darius Henderson when he hit the bottom of the post, which, for me, was bad defending.”
Dale had the best of the chances in the second half but a string of excellent saves by Scunthorpe United goalkeeper Luke Daniels kept the Iron in the game, earning himself a Man of the Match award.
“You’ve got to be careful with them Man of the Match sponsor awards because sometimes it’s sponsors wanting to pick their favourite players to see afterwards or enjoy a little bit of conversation with, but I thought their goalkeeper performed superbly today," said Hill.
"He kept us at bay, he made one or two fine saves, especially the one in the second half with Ian Henderson.
“It’s a difficult task to come here. I don’t think we’ve picked up points here in the last two seasons so to get a point I’m relatively pleased. I just thought that if we had done a little bit better in the first half then we should have been walking away with three points.”
The full interview is on Dale PlayerHD.