WHERE there’s a will there’s a way.

And Rochdale’s Will Buckley brought a smile to manager Keith Hill’s face with a goal in his team’s 3-1 win at Accrington Stanley on Sunday, writes Mike Floyd

Dale recovered from an early blow - John Miles’ first minute goal - when Buckley was brought down in the box and Adam Le Fondre scored from the penalty spot.

Buckley then popped up in the 56th minute to notch a fine individual goal and set the visitors on the path to victory.

It was, though, a hit and miss performance by Buckley as his manager pointed out.

Hill said: "I was disappointed with Will’s outcome in the first half. I think it was a lazy start to the match for him. I think he could have done a lot better keeping possession. But Will Buckley is out there for a purpose, and that’s to create opportunities. The one time he did do the right thing in the first half we got a penalty. In the second half, as the game opened up, there was a lot more room for Will to do his work and you could see what kind of talent he his. He took his goal extremely well. The future is bright for him.  Will’s our leading goalscorer with three goals, but there is something wrong there when you consider the number of chances we create.  I think if you dressed it down and analysed the possession count and the chances we have created in all the games so far we should have someone on 10 goals and sitting on top of the Sky top goalscorers chart."

The Rochdale boss was, on the whole, happy with his team’s performance, although a mite disappointed they didn’t take more of the multitude of chances they created to put the game to bed.

He added: "It was a satisfying afternoon after a bad start when you consider we conceded inside the first two minutes. As the game developed we knew we were going to create opportunities and we did.   We could have been level straight after they scored when Gary Jones went through and possibly could have done better with his header, but I was encouraged by the latter stages of the game and the performance.  I would have liked it to have been a little bit easier. Had we converted one or two more of our opportunities it would have justified our second-half  performance."

After two successive wins Hill isn’t getting carried away and knows he has a long hard season ahead.

"To be honest the season lasts 46 games. You kick start it, you end well, and so on, but you have to be consistent throughout. We have lost two matches. If you lose 10 you get promoted. We lost 12 last season and made the play-offs. I think if we had won one of those we would have got automatic promotion. We are doing well and we are going into next week’s fixture with confidence and scoring goals which is what we should be doing.  We do create lot of opportunities, and now the goals are coming it takes a little bit of pressure off the defence. We won’t get punished for the mistakes we make. We need hard workers in what is an attacking and defensive unit.  We have got to be very fit and we work a lot on that aspect of our game, so we know what we are capable of doing and what the players are capable of doing."