Rochdale has everything in place to be Championship club, says chairman Andy Mazey

Rochdale chairman Andy Mazey believes the Hornets are a Championship standard club.

The Hornets confirmed the takeover midway through 2020, which saw the Crown Oil Arena side converted from Rochdale Hornets RLFC Society Ltd (IPS) to Rochdale Hornets RLFC Ltd (Plc), with Mazey leading the way alongside board members in which he worked alongside at Swinton.

And despite their relegation in 2019 and only taking to the field once in the League 1 season last year due to the pandemic, Mazey believes the side has everything it takes to be an established Championship club and they will be targeting promotion this season.

He said: “The challenge was always to make sure the club came through.

“We could get to the point where we are looking forward to playing rugby again. The furlough scheme has helped in respect to sort of safeguarding people’s contracts and jobs. We very fortunately put the club in a very good footing. The takeover had gone through just before the pandemic hit.

“We put a real good structure in place, some investors at the board room table. We’ve positioned really well and we’ve come out of it probably as well as you could expect and we’re really ready to rock and roll now and have a good go at it.

“We took the club believing it is a Championship club, so we never wanted to be hanging around in League 1 too long and we believe we’ve got everything in place to be a Championship club.

“We’ve got the coach with the experience, a playing squad that will compete and and we’ll build on that and support and back Matt (Calland, coach) moving forward.

“The message really is, we’re here, we are ready and we’re going nowhere and the journey is set to continue.”

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