Brian Barry-Murphy described Wednesday night’s friendly win over Atherton Collieries as a great workout.
Dale were 4-1 winners over the Northern Premier side, with a first-half team winning 3-1, and a second-half side winning 1-0.
The Dale boss was pleased with what he saw.
“It was a great workout for us,” said Barry-Murphy.
“I’m very happy, and very thankful to Atherton for inviting us to play at a stadium we’ve never played at in our whole history. It’s a new ground for us and we really enjoyed it.
“We’re a long way behind other teams in our division who have been training a lot longer than us, so I was just worried about our lads getting through even 45 minutes, because they’ve been away from competitive action for so long.
“The attitude and application is always first class from our guys and that was the case tonight. I thought it was a very competitive game and we scored some great goals.
“We were very grateful to get the game. In pre-season, in my experience as a player, you always go back to the same grounds or Clubs over and over again and it can get a bit monotonous. With so many Clubs in the region, it’s great for us to go to different ones. We’d like to give our supporters a chance to visit which is the more special side to it, but that’s not the case at the moment.
“We go into another game at Stockport County on Saturday and I think it just about building up our fitness as gradually and as progressively as possible. It’s very early stages for our guys and we’re very worried about exposing them to injuries, which we had a lot of last season.”