LATE goals by Eddie O'Neill and Steve Halford saw Rochdale get their pre-season off to a losing start. But manager Steve Parkin was not too concerned.

"If we had played excellent stuff and won four or five nil, where would we have gone from there?" he asked. "In truth, the game probably came a little early for us in terms of preparation because we have only just started doing ball work. It was a good workout for us, and we played some decent stuff in the first-half."

Parkin, missing at least four players who will form the basis of his first team, gave several triallists the opportunity to impress as he looks to build for the coming season.

"We had gone 13 or 14 days without injury and then picked up a few niggling knocks," he added. "One or two of the lads that we were looking at did OK, and we will certainly be looking at them again." Tweet