Stevenage 4 : 2 Rochdale

Stevenage beat a poor Rochdale side 4-2 on Saturday at Broadhall Way. In truth Stevenage should count themselves lucky to have come up against Rochdale whilst defending like that, against better sides in this division it could have been a very depressing afternoon indeed for the home faithful.

Rochdale started quite brightly forcing a save from Chris Day in the opening minute, the Stevenage defence were hesitant, standing off and allowing several other near misses in the first 10 minutes. With the ball Stevenage looked a much better proposition, they were direct and high tempo using the wings and hitting the strikers early. This tactic would not have paid off had it not been for the referee being very sharp on defenders pushing down on the striker’s shoulders, something that isn’t picked up enough at this level.

On 12 minutes Stevenage made the breakthrough, a cross in from the right by Lawrie Wilson was controlled skilfully Craig Reid. He turned and fired in a rather scuffed effort. Scuffed it may have been but power didn’t matter because the placement was perfect, right into the side netting, just inside the post out of the despairing reach of the Rochdale ‘keeper.

The pattern of the game continued similarly, Stevenage allowing their opponents too much time and space on the ball and permitting them to pass it at will. Fortunately Rochdale had little cutting edge to their play despite this possession and failed to carve out clear cut chances. Chris Beardsley bucked this trend, pinching the ball from a dithering Darby who was last man on the half way line. Darby went down and bought himself a free-kick to prevent Beardsley having a free run on goal.

This proved a turning point. Rochdale turned up the wick, a shot from Ball through the legs of Bostwick brought a great save from Day and a clearance off the line out for a corner from Roberts. From the resulting corner Darius Charles headed half clear, but the ball fell to Jones just inside the box and he volleyed home hard an excellent strike.

Stevenage got back on the front foot straight from kick-off, and immediately forced their way back into the lead. A Craig Reid shot from the edge of the box was only parried by Kean in the Rochdale goal. Chris Beardsley showed excellent reflexes and a true striker’s instinct to jump quickly on the rebound and put it over the keeper into the roof of the net from a narrow angle.

The Rochdale players were clearly becoming frustrated by their defensive frailties. Gary Jones picked up a yellow card for high feet against Lawrie Wilson and Widdowson was lucky to escape punishment beyond the free kick given when he clearly elbowed Chris Beardsley in the cheek.

Beardsley extracted punishment of another nature on the stroke of half time. Charles fed the ball into his feet just outside the right hand edge of the penalty area, the defence allowed him to turn and shoot and he curled a delicious shot into the right hand corner of the goal.

3-1 at half time pleased the majority of the (disappointingly small) 3021 crowd despite the defensively frailties their team had shown. They were even more pleased 5 minutes into the second half when Craig Reid powered home a header from a John Mousinho free kick, only to be mystified when the goal was ruled out for some sort of infringement and even more surprised when Craig Reid was booked for the challenge (I can only assume that booking was for his reaction to the disallowed goal rather than the challenge itself.)

This near miss seemed to galvanise Rochdale who came back more and more into the game. On the hour mark Adams replace Grimes whose pace and movement had proved a threat and Barnes-Homer replaced Kennedy. With the Stevenage midfield looking increasingly stretched Josh Walker was brought on for the first appearance of his second loan spell. Darius Charles came off and Scott Laird moved back to left back.

Shortly after this Stevenage scored their forth. A long straight ball was missed by the first defender who was too busy pulling Chris Beardsley over (he was unlucky not to have a penalty earlier on, but also lucky not to concede one at the other end.) Two defenders and the goalkeeper closed in on the ball, but all of them hesitated allowing Craig Reid to sneak in between them. I thought he had poked the ball in himself for his second of the game, but the replay showed he had merely forced an own goal from the unfortunate Trotman.

You’d think Rochdale were dead and buried at 4-1, but they immediately went up the other end and scored. Stevenage’s hesitant defending and reluctance to get a foot in proved their undoing yet again, this time it was Captain Mark Roberts’s costly hesitation which allowed David Ball to shoot into the corner of the goal from the edge of the area. You’d think we’d have learned about his threat in the Peterborough league cup game prior to his transfer window switch to Rochdale, but apparently not.