Rochdale fans, players, manager, backroom staff, board: "fuck this"

FOLLOWING THEIR recent play-off final defeat and a poor run of results spanning over 30 years, it has been confirmed that Rochdale AFC committed suicide in the early hours of yesterday morning.

A radio team from BBC Pennines had arrived at the site of Rochdale’s Spotland Stadium at 9am expecting the unveiling of Dale's new away goalkeeper's kit for the 08/09 season. Instead they found only a sad final note from the club, pinned to a post in the middle of the industrial wasteland where the ground had once stood.

The heartbreaking statement from the club's fans, players, management team, ground staff, sponsors, board, mascot, stadium, history, kit, and emblem revealed: "We just can’t be bothered anymore. We never really look like being promoted or relegated, there’s nothing to look forward to.

Honestly, what's the point? Would League Two be any different if we'd never been born? In fact, fuck this. It would be best for everyone if we just ended it all."

A close friend of the club, which has spent a record 34 seasons in the same division, said that the warning signs had been there for some time: "Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but now it's becoming clear that something was wrong when Rochdale AFC turned up to work drunk with knife marks on its forearm. It's too late now but I really should have seen it as a cry for help, not just a reason to support Stockport County.

Rochdale's sad demise is not the first time a football club has taken its own life:

• After a season of performances fans described as "mopey, withdrawn and negative", Maidstone United drowned itself in 1992 using the then fashionable method for suicide nicknamed "liquidation".

• Scarborough supporters staged an intervention during 2007 when the Yorkshire club's PA system would not stop playing Joy Division's Closer. With debts spiralling out of control, the club was found dead two days later with gunshot wounds to its face, leaving the words "It's better to burn out than to fade away" spelt out in half-time raffle draw tickets on the pitch.

• The nation (Scotland) feared the worst for Gretna when its long-term partner died horrifically after a night of substance abuse featuring a lethal cocktail of tactical substitutions, 'kids for a quid' deals and drop balls. The sad Scottish club was found a week later in a remote corner of Gretna Green railway station, hanging by its shinpads.