Rochdale 0 Carlisle United 1: As the final whistle blew, Paul Simpson spun on his heels, faced his bench, and shook his fists. Not in a gentle, measured Tim Henman sort of way, but with force. With intensity. With feeling.
A second later, Simpson was back to being Simpson: handshakes, applause, reasonable and balanced post-match comment, no convulsions. In that moment, though, he had been all of us.
This season will remain a trip of many steps; 19 more of them, before we know what truly awaits Carlisle. In his every utterance along the way, Simpson will advise caution, focused ambition, one diligent step after another.
Each of those matches, though, has the potential to take the Blues to a wide range of emotional places across 90 minutes. At Rochdale, home of the EFL’s worst team, Carlisle went on an exacting journey, right enough.
The experience, and the outcome, was after all painted on Simpson's and his players’ faces by the end. They wore the happy exhaustion of hard-worn winners. After the sweeping aside of Hartlepool four days earlier, this was different: a more realistic exhibition of close, edgy, elbows-out, ball-in-the-air League Two fayre.
It was one side desperate to patch up its limitations against another with a tantalising glimpse of something very good. It was never remotely anything you would describe as free-flowing. Often, it wasn’t what you’d describe even as good.
Except…in another sense it was. Carlisle, having pocketed an early lead, did not let that advantage go. Rochdale may be no great shakes but anybody coming here and expecting a given does not know football.
United have been in enough relegation battles down the decades to know that those at the foot of things, at some time or other, find a way. They go around the houses to discover a point or three that keeps a fading flame alive.
Jim Bentley’s Rochdale tried exactly that. They fielded one set of attackers and then brought on another. They tried through-balls and interplay, then reverted to crosses and pressure.
They scored an equaliser, albeit one that was disallowed for offside. They made Carlisle dig and battle, chase and tackle, do the ugly things when beauty was clearly not on parade.
It is the mark of a successful side that they can entertain such a challenge and come through it. United, as a result, are now six points above fifth, seven above eighth. Third place was beyond them, on account of Northampton Town’s victory over Barrow.
But Carlisle are entitled, just now, to regard themselves as the clear fourth automatic promotion contender. It would have been easy to have been knocked off their stride on Saturday, but their refusal to let it happen bodes well for the many further tests of their fortitude.
John-Kymani Gordon also showed the value of having a player ready and primed. At 19, he took the game's only goal with impressive smoothness. It is two from three from the Crystal Palace loanee’s first sampling of first-team football; as many as a player he replaced, Jack Stretton, got in 23.
That’s a healthy tick for United’s mid-season recruitment. The rest was down to the foundation already set. After Gordon swept onto a counter-attacking pass from Kristian Dennis in the eighth minute, Carlisle’s 1,634 fans celebrated in a big, surging wave…and then settled down to some more challenging stuff.
The Blues, as they had against Hartlepool, had started with bloodthirsty intent. A rather stodgy pitch meant Simpson asked his team to get the ball forward without delay. Carlisle pushed Bentley’s side back, put bodies in their half, tested their fraying nerve.
The hosts looked anxious, unsure. An Owen Moxon corner almost fell for Jordan Gibson, and Dennis shot wide from 20. Going the other way, Rochdale struggled to connect passes forward, where Devante Rodney and D’Mani Mellor were willing runners.
They did, though, gradually make it more of a battle, and not simply in an ungainly sense. They disrupted Carlisle, stopped the Blues putting a foot on the ball. Rodney had a couple of sighters, though you fancied home chances would not come with any kind of regularity.
The same could not be said of yellow cards, Ross Joyce booking three Carlisle players in the first half, entailing a certain wariness after the break. A second goal would surely have left the hosts in smithereens but United were rarely able to get through or around Bentley’s lines.
Callum Guy’s 30-yarder whacked an advertising board, and Gibson’s running between midfield an attack was an outlet Carlisle never fully capitalised on. Otherwise it was meagre. United, though, did not stop pressing, competing, running – and this evidently became their way to win.
It needed to be. Rochdale became more urgent, more varied. Mellor peeled into space to meet one back-post cross, then Rodney failed to win a penalty against Morgan Feeney. A string of substitutions saw Ian Henderson and Scott Quigley join the Rochdale chase, Omari Patrick leading the reply for United with his positive running before Joe Garner and Alfie McCalmont also came on to join in the spadework, which Guy in particular was carrying out with terrific, dogged intent.
Another home arrival, Abraham Odoh, drew a fine, flying stop from Tomas Holy. Owen Dodgson cleared the far post after cutting in. In the 88th minute the wily Henderson finally found the net and, it seemed a point, but eventually the offside call was confirmed.
Spotland howled. Bentley scowled. Carlisle, with a few scuffs and bruises, punched the air, embraced, breathed out and went home.
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