Local author Mark Hodkinson's latest book details a season with England's worst ever football team

Mark Hodkinson with The Longest Winter

Local author, journalist and publisher Mark Hodkinson's latest book about Dale’s worst ever season is published on Monday (29 August).

‘The Longest Winter’ takes a microscopic look at 1973/74 when Rochdale AFC, mirroring the town itself and the rest of the country, was on its knees with high unemployment, hyperinflation and near social breakdown.

The Arab-Israeli War had sent energy prices soaring. Petrol was scarce. Offices were limited to a temperature of 17°C and power cuts were frequent. A three-day working week came in as inflation took hold and miners and other workers went on strike.

Rochdale suffered more than most. Its cotton industry was on shut-down in the face of cheap imports, and the football team was a mirror image of the town – tired, defeated, clinging to life.

The Rochdale team of 1973-74 is considered the worst to play in the football league. They finished bottom of the third division, winning just twice in 46 league matches.

They closed the season with a 22-game winless run and played one home match in front of the lowest-ever post-war crowd. That season 32 different players turned out for the team, many of them drafted in from amateur or Sunday league clubs.

The Longest Winter features scores of interviews with players, coaching staff and fans who recall those dark, desperate days of the early 1970s, and details Rochdale's recovery as both a football club and a town, and plots the psychological effects of this disastrous season on both the players and supporters.

Mark is an experienced investigative journalist and author who has written for The Times for two decades. He has also contributed to The Observer, The Guardian, FourFourTwo and GQ.

He has published several acclaimed football books, including Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men with Manchester City and Believe in the Sign, long-listed for the William Hill award.

His most recent football book is the critically acclaimed The Overcoat Men, which describes how two unsung heroes, David Kilpatrick and Graham Morris, were able to save Rochdale football club from extinction in the 80s.