RICHARD FOAD explains his lifelong love for an unfashionable club... 

I’VE been asked the question headlining this article many times over the years after professing my support for the Lancashire club, usually accompanied with a slight squeak of disbelief.

The fact I live 275 miles away from the town and have no obvious links only adds to the incredulity. If I’d purported to follow Manchester United or Liverpool then this would be accepted without question, albeit with ill-concealed mutterings of ‘plastic’. But Rochdale?
It was the late 70s when I first st...