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General Category => Altrincham FC First Team => Topic started by: Timperley The Best on February 28, 2018, 07:39:43 PM

Title: Rochdale
Post by: Timperley The Best on February 28, 2018, 07:39:43 PM
 I really shouldn't be like this but I still never  want them to win all these years post re election fiasco
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: thegazelle on February 28, 2018, 07:46:08 PM
i was thinking that when i cheered when they scored their last minute equaliser and forgot myself , I also seem to have forgotten that i hate Wigan . But never what few short years i will have left will i wish Macc or the Green scum (makes spitting noise) well. weird INNIT
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: Saughall Robin on March 01, 2018, 10:16:29 AM
I really shouldn't be like this but I still never  want them to win all these years post re election fiasco

They were the recipients but it wasn't their fault - it was LOOOOton  ;)
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: Saughall Robin on March 01, 2018, 10:19:29 AM
i was thinking that when i cheered when they scored their last minute equaliser and forgot myself , I also seem to have forgotten that i hate Wigan . But never what few short years i will have left will i wish Macc or the Green scum (makes spitting noise) well. weird INNIT


Wigan only seemed to be rivals in the last three years of the cheshire league to me - And their record for 65/6 would have walked the league other years - I resented their bbb attitude but felt sorry for them at the time.  M*cc and the Scum ... that's another thing entirely!
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: thegazelle on March 01, 2018, 03:17:02 PM
i recall the intense rivalry with wigan went on until their promotion in 78? . springfield park was a scary place to be as a teenager and there was always bad feeling on the terraces at Moss Lane.
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: Uncle Globnasty on March 01, 2018, 05:00:34 PM
I really shouldn't be like this but I still never  want them to win all these years post re election fiasco

They were the recipients but it wasn't their fault - it was LOOOOton  ;)

.....and GRIMsby
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: Bonzo on March 01, 2018, 05:33:22 PM
Agree about Luton....whose Chairman I believe was "caught in a traffic jam at the tea urn" in the room next to the meeting, and the other culprit was ( I thought) the Chairman of Mansfield who voted in the wrong group, as they had been promoted that year.

Rochdale at the time had parachuted Bob Stokoe (of Sunderland fame) in for the end of that season to give them some cudos....

However revenge was sweet, I seem to remember we drew Rochdale in the  F A Cup the following season...and stuffed them !

Still bitter after all these years ? You bet... we deserved our chance at going into the football league at that time.
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: TheCultOfIanTunnacliffe on March 01, 2018, 06:34:22 PM
Agree about Luton....whose Chairman I believe was "caught in a traffic jam at the tea urn" in the room next to the meeting, and the other culprit was ( I thought) the Chairman of Mansfield who voted in the wrong group, as they had been promoted that year.

Rochdale at the time had parachuted Bob Stokoe (of Sunderland fame) in for the end of that season to give them some cudos....

However revenge was sweet, I seem to remember we drew Rochdale in the  F A Cup the following season...and stuffed them !

Still bitter after all these years ? You bet... we deserved our chance at going into the football league at that time.




From an Altrincham FC perspective, the villains of the piece way back in June 1980 were Luton Town and Grimsby Town.

Here's an excerpt from an article on that 1980 re-election fiasco that I wrote for the Robins Review a few years ago:  


"The votes cast in the eventual Football League re-election poll for the 1979/80 season were as follows: Darlington: 49; Crewe Alexandra: 48; Hereford United: 48; Rochdale: 26 and Altrincham: 25. If the Robins had received just one additional vote and tied with the Spotland club, a second ballot featuring only those two candidates would have ensued, in which the eligible electors were then obliged to cast a single vote for the club of their choice. In the two preceding instances when it had proved necessary to hold a second round of voting, the Non League club had, indeed, prevailed on each occasion and, hence, had secured admission into the Football League (Hereford United defeating Barrow in 1972 and Wigan Athletic overcoming Southport in 1978).  

Alty‘s initial emotions of intense heartache and sheer disbelief at this cruel news that they had failed to displace Rochdale by just two votes were subsequently exacerbated by disillusionment and the impression that they had been cheated, when it emerged that two clubs had actually omitted to vote and the absence of their ballot papers had not been detected until after the AGM had concluded.

The first of the culprits to be identified were Second Division Luton Town, whose delegation of representatives had been late in arriving for the meeting after ostensibly getting held up in London’s traffic. Their Chairman, Denis Mortimer, duly released a statement: “The traffic was bad and we were delayed. To be fair to everyone involved, I am not going to reveal who we would have voted for.”

Grimsby Town were later unmasked as being the second guilty party in this electoral chaos, when it was disclosed that the Chairman of the newly-promoted Third Division Champions, Dick Middleton, had contrived to sit in the main body of the hall in error, rather than proceed to his rightful place at the front amongst the voting members. Consequently, he was not handed his ballot paper.

The Manchester Evening News’ Non League Football correspondent, Doug Peacock, succeeded in buttonholing an unnamed Grimsby Town official as they scurried away from the AGM, who sheepishly divulged their account of the cause of this farcical confusion: “We understood that in previous years, representatives of newly-promoted clubs stayed among the non-voting-members of the Third and Fourth Divisions during the meeting. It was a misunderstanding.”

However, a radically different theory pertaining to the reason for the absence of four of this total of eight uncast votes was subsequently expounded by Graham Heathcote in Andy Mitten’s article on Altrincham FC in the November 2004 issue of Four Four Two magazine, when the Alty midfielder alleged that: “One bloke who promised to support us got pissed and fell asleep."

Just to add insult to injury, the Robins’ officials intimated that both of the clubs involved had previously indicated that they were in favour of electing Alty into the Fourth Division. A crestfallen Noel White remarked: “Two clubs did not vote and they were as near as you can get to being ones we could bank on. But they did not arrive and now we feel a little bit cheated. We are very, very disappointed because we went flat out for the league this time. We only asked to be judged on merit and I don’t think we have been.”

________________________________________________________________________________________


20th November 1982

FA Cup First Round

Altrincham 2 Rochdale 1

Barry Howard got the winner.

Both teams finished with nine men.








Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: cheshire cat on March 01, 2018, 08:51:31 PM
Whilst I can understand the dismay at not being elected I can't help feeling we would have had the poorest facility in the football league.

Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: One Foot in the Grave on March 01, 2018, 09:55:22 PM
Whilst I can understand the dismay at not being elected I can't help feeling we would have had the poorest facility in the football league.



There speaks a man who's either never been to Accrington, or is desperately trying to forget the experience.
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: JTH on March 01, 2018, 10:12:32 PM
Whilst I can understand the dismay at not being elected I can't help feeling we would have had the poorest facility in the football league.



What in 1980? Wigan, Halifax and Rochdale might have been bigger but were poorer grounds and quite a few more were falling to bits. One thing all those visits to FL clubs in the Cup showed us that our set up was certainly good enough to host League football.
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: cheshire cat on March 02, 2018, 10:50:19 AM
It is true. I have never been to Accrington for the football. I used to follow a team in the fourth tier back in the seventies and eighties. I must have been lucky with regard to the away games I did attend.
Title: Re: Rochdale
Post by: GB Alty on March 02, 2018, 03:35:33 PM
It is true. I have never been to Accrington for the football. I used to follow a team in the fourth tier back in the seventies and eighties. I must have been lucky with regard to the away games I did attend.
you used to follow a team in the fourth tier back in the seventies and eighties yet you think the facilities at Altrincham would have been poorest in the football league? Really? As JTH says many were worse