Manager Robbie Stockdale looks ahead to Dale’s Sky Bet League Two opener away at Harrogate Town…
“I’m very much excited for it [the game],” said Stockdale.
“It has been a really busy week. It was great to meet the fans at the fans’ forum, we’ve been signing players and then we obviously had the news that fans could attend the game, with tickets going so quickly. It has been a hectic week and it finishes with the game on Saturday.”
Fans snapped up the full allocation of away tickets for the match within 45 minutes of them going on sale on Wednesday, and the Gaffer is looking forward to having support in numbers at the EnviroVent Stadium.
“It’ll be great to have that backing there on Saturday. I think somebody told me that tickets sold out in 40 odd minutes - wow, that’s brilliant! It’s a fantastic backing and it’ll be our job to give them [the fans] something to cheer.”
On Saturday’s game, he commented: “Harrogate have done really well to come through the leagues and establish themselves as a football league club.
“They’ve got a good squad of experienced players, so it’ll be a challenge. Ideally, like I said before, [it would be great] if we could push this game back a week to give me another week with the new players, but it’s fine and we are where we are.
“We’ve been very good in pre-season and hopefully we follow that on, on Saturday.
“One thing I would say is that the players have been fantastic all the way through and we’ve always said that it was a process getting to the first league game of the season, and everybody is really looking forward to it. I’m happy with where we’re at, but we’re going to get better.”
Watch the Gaffer’s pre-match interview in full on YouTube.