As all have said, we're now on the journey . Attendance published for yesterday anywhere?

6011

I thought Belcki might have been along to join in with congratulating the team and JK and indeed Andrew Chalmers........

And that bloke pretending to be Hood

Yes we have officially been promoted

I thought there were meant to be 14 in the Championship. Assuming 1 spot is for the winner of Worky/Swinton, who is missing?

I saw him running over and guessed he was heading for family members. Nothing to be ashamed about far from it, when I was 18 I was lucky enough to win an English Schools Track & Field championship (Shot put) despite that being errrrrrrr......28 years ago (blimey) I vividly recall the look on my parents faces when I gave them the medal that day. Sadly they are no longer with me but these memories like yours are something no money can buy, congratulations to both of you.

On a separate note I am glad I have the day off work today, it might be the drive which I really do not enjoy but there was such an atmosphere yesterday I am knackered and a bit ho.

Thank you very much. Yes very special memories.
To be honest I have lost count the number of times I have filled up at work today looking back at the photos from yesterday when he came over to me

Rochdale have been moved into league 1 forum for some reason.

If I knew how to put pictures on here I’d put a couple of really special ones from yesterday.

Got to a few more games this year and was there yesterday. The first time I've had that pit of the stomach nervousness / excitement in a long time prior to a game.
Decent crowd on too, which added to the occasion.

Hopefully we've now gone as low as we will and the only way is up from here (as the song goes!).

Right coach, good group of players, a sound addition already for 2019, all looks bright.

It's be good to get something sorted ground wise.....what a difference the sound of 6000 people in a compact stadium would have made (I won't hold my breath mind)

Good to have you back Wigsy.

Allow me

Aww, Brings a tear to my eyes. Excellent emotional picture, thanks

That’s it, thank you very much Paul.
It was a very special and emotional moment for us both.
When I turned round afterwards I was amazed to see so many people watching and quite a few were wiping tears away, it really was an unbelievable moment

Now the dust is settling I just wanted to echo the thoughts already expressed and say a massive congratulations to AC, JK and all the players. Promotion was an absolute MUST in my view as I just couldn't see us surviving another season in L1, so the relief is immense. Although we chose to do it the hard way, I hope that in the long run that might be to our benefit - I certainly think the emotions felt on Sunday would had have been far less intense had we finished comfortably on top of the table. As for Workington, some of their tactics were an absolute disgrace, but that was the only hope they had of winning, and for a short spell it did look as though we were going to get dragged into it. Fair play to the referee, who although being dreadful in many respects, (offside non - existent!) at least had the courage to send off Moi Moi. I'm so looking forward to next season. I love going to Batley, Halifax and Dewsbury, have never been to Barrow before, and who knows, I might just make it to Toronto!

It was good to see the whole club celebrating on sunday, from the backroom staff through to first team players.
I didn't notice the club captain though. I take it that Lee Smith is still in that position?

Nope Lee Smith left a few weeks ago. Made himself unavailable for games so Bulls have let him go.

Cheers for that. Its a shame that we never saw him playing for us at his best

He still played apart this year so assuming they parted on good terms surely he should have been there?

As he wasn't there, assume not then?
There was a tweet from him, maybe 3months ago which was jokingly commented on by several players at the time where he said he was going to get started on cutting the grass. I assumed that meant he was on gardening leave.

Check out his tweets on 31st Aug and 17th September and Garside's response to it.

Can't se anything from Garside, can see Smith talking to Garside.

Tweeted on 23rd Sept that 'we need to do it the hard way' with folk asking him if he's going to York...

Shame Garside's is protected looked like a decent exchange that

Watching the replay of the game again a few things struck me.

Both wings did a huge amount of work and really got us on the front foot. I’d love us to sign Hitchcox if we had the money, he offers way more than Grant. DFG is no more than cover in my opinion.

Lilley was excellent running at the big men from dummy half and provided some zip around there we lack when Hallas plays there.

Our halfbacks were both poor. Chisholm seems to want to do it all himself and ties himself in knots. He seems to want to run the ball himself all the time and then look to create for others when all his options to run are closed. That makes him hard to read and it doesn’t get the best out of the backline. Keyes seemed to fade out of the game the longer it went on, he hardly got his hands on the ball. Both scored fine individual tries but barring a couple of decent kicks they didn’t seem to create much ball in hand, particularly in the middle part of the game.

The pack did very well, particularly when they came onto the ball at speed. When they took the ball flat footed they made far less of an impact. We were too flat in attack at times I thought. Glad we’ve signed Wood as he put himself about and seems to have that bit of mongrel we need.