Dale were well worth their win which could have been embarrassingly more for the Cumbrians.

Carlisle never came to terms with the pace and movement of hat-trick hero Paul Connor and his fellow strike partner Clive Platt.

Carlisle boss Ian Atkins was disappointed with his team's performance and said: "The three central defenders never coped with their long balls. They just couldn't handle it and we got punished. Some of the players think they've cracked it but will now be back to earth. We will have to dust ourselves down and get on with it on Saturday against Blackpool.

Their strike partnership cost quarter of a million pounds and that sums it up. We now need to go undefeated for the remaining games and we are capable of doing that."

Carlisle started like they meant business forcing three corners in the first two minutes. This proved to be a false dawn as Rochdale took over.

Paul Connor played in Gary Jones after eight minutes for the Dale man to place his shot across the helpless Matty Glennon into the bottom corner.

On 22 minutes a Stuart Whitehead foul on Connor allowed Lee Todd to step up and curl the resulting free kick into the top corner of the net.

Conner had two further scoring opportunities before he scored Dales' third on 30 minutes, after holding off a Whitehead challenge to slot passed Glennon.

Worse was to follow four minutes later when Platt played in Connor who grabbed his second goal with a thunderous shot into the top left hand corner.

With traffic virtually one way the Cumbrians were more than pleased to get to half time without conceding further goals.

Carlisle again started the second half brightly with Jon Cullen getting a header on target from a Gordon Connelly cross after 53 minutes.

Mick Galloway then fed Dobie in on the left only for Neil Edwards to turn his shot away for a corner.

Cullen then ripped a fight foot shot wide of the post before a hopeless cause became completely lost on 61 minutes.

Dale full back Wayne Evans hit a speculative shot from 40 yards only for Glennon to completely misjudge the bounce allowing the ball to bobble through his hands and into the net.

Three minutes later the final nail was hammered home when Conner snatched his third as the Carlisle defence allowed him to turn and volley passed Glennon.

The only positive thing to come out of the night was the magnificent Cumbrian support whose performance unfortunately was not matched by the players.

/Time

/Time

/Time

/Time

/Time

/Time