Josh Woods, Charlie Warren, Tyler Walton – with a brace – and substitute Alex Henderson all struck in a dominant 5-0 victory as Stanley made it nine games in a row unbeaten in all competitions.

Remarkably, it was also their first away win since February but it took them up to ninth in League Two.

Asked if the play-offs were a genuine incentive for Accy, boss Doolan – whose team finished 16th last term – said: “Yeah, it always has been for us.

“We say to the players, you’re trying to progress and develop and be better than last year, and last year at one point, round about February, we were six points off the play-offs.

“So to be sitting where we are now, one point off the play-offs, is credit to the players.”

Doolan savoured the “outstanding” goals Accy scored as he urged them to build on what he felt was “probably” the best performance of his two-and-a-half-year reign.

“A result like that just helps build momentum,” he said. “I think we’ve had that for the past eight, nine games now.

“You can see the confidence, the belief in the lads that they’ve got in terms of how they play, the hunger and desire they’ve got in terms of wanting to keep the ball out the back of the net, in terms of not having the ball, winning it back as quickly as possible, the possession, and trying to hit teams.

“It’s just about the lads trying to keep hitting them levels every week.”

Dale were booed off after a fifth game in a row without a victory and boss Ian Watson admitted: “That performance is not acceptable at all.

“We start the game a million miles away, we’re not focused, we don’t seem like we’re ready for the game, it seems like the game comes as a surprise to us.

“We make a mistake for the first goal and then we don’t recover from that. There’s nothing about the performance that I liked at all and it has to be the biggest learning curve for us to make sure that this never, ever happens again, and we improve and we make sure that we’re so much better than that.

“There’s no excuses for it. They beat us up in every single part of the game and we just allowed the game to pass us by. I almost felt like we were just hoping that the game would end and we’d get off the pitch, and that is just so unacceptable, and we have to address it this week.”