Position : Forward
Played : 1990-91
Appearances : 34
Goals : 10
Peter was signed for £10,000 from Bradford in the summer of 1990. He had made 20 first team appearances for Bradford scoring twice.
"Cozzie" is hard to place in the spectrum of Dale strikers. He wasn't a target man despite being 6'0 and wasn't a penalty box predator either. He was often quite anonymous on the field but he did have the useful knack of scoring vital goals often late in the game. By far the most memorable of these for me was the equaliser at home to Northampton which went in at about 16.58 as the Cobblers had been guilty of appalling gamesmanship , feigning injury and time wasting, since taking the lead. And so justice was done but one guy I knew didn't see it that way.
He was a work colleague known as Irish John and he liked a bit of a flutter. He had some sort of accumulator bet on five games that Saturday. Four of the games went his way and if Northampton had won 1-0 he'd have made a tidy sum. At 16.55 he thought the money was his and then the dreadful truth came through. For years afterwards whenever I saw him in the corridor I'd be greeted with the words "That Bastard Costello !"
It was a case of that bastard Dave Sutton in March when Cozzie was suddenly sold to Peterborough who were splashing a bit of new found cash on deadline day, for £30,000. It was the final nail in our dwindling playoff hopes. What made it more annoying was that, like Preston's purchase of Steve Taylor, Peter was only bought for squad ballast and he played just 8 goalless games for them. One was against Dale at Spotland where he silenced hecklers in the Sandy Lane by reminding us how many he'd scored on his fingers. After a previous loan spell Peter moved to Lincoln in 1992 and scored 7 in 38 appearances for them. He was released in 1994 and after a brief spell at Dover went to Hong Kong for two years. He returned in 1997 to play Conference football with Kettering and then Boston. He settled there winning their player of the season in 1999-00 and playing alongside the young Anthony Elding. He was still there as a senior player, now in midfield, when they "won" promotion to the Football league in 2002 and so added another 18 League appearances (but no goals) to his total after an 8 year gap. He was released at the end of the season and played for Stevenage and Cambridge City before retiring.
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