Barrow AFC 1-0 Lincoln City

The hottest ticket in town!

These are the kind of away games we really look forward to. I mean nobody with an ounce of sense or reason would even contemplate taking a three hour plus trip by car to watch a struggling football team in the 5th tier of English football on a Tuesday night in late September.
Well we did. Along with 106 other Imps fans.
Long away trips on Tuesday nights are a must do for us, and we have done a fair share of them in our time at the likes of Carlisle, Gillingham, and Southend to name but three.When the fixture lists came out back in June we had a scan up and down to see which long range away Tuesday trips we had and this one caught the eye.

Before our trip North we met up in local Weatherspoons for a bite to eat and drink. The weather was nice and it was great to chill out in the beer garden and watch the world go by. Given that it was a Tuesday afternoon i was surprised to see the number of folk in the pub. I mean they can't all have booked time off work to watch a midweek footie game could they? Maybe a few were just tucking into a quick dozen pints or so then heading home to watch the afternoon showing of the Jeremy Kyle show or something.

Yes love i have got my coat in case it gets cold,
Yes i wont get into any trouble
And yes i will remember to bring some f##king bread back!

We set off on our epic journey at 1.30 pm and made surprisingly good time encountering very little congestion along the way. The journey was filled with the normal banter and shit flying around the car. The high point was taking the scenic route into Barrow along the Cumbrian coast and passing not one but two ice cream vans. Its all going off along the coast these days it would seem. Well there seemed more life here than there was at Southport on the opening day of the season. We arrived in Barrow at about 4.30pm and headed straight for the town centre to check out was was happening in down town Barrow on a Tuesday evening.

This is Barrow

The answer to that was not alot. We got a few inquisitive looks at our Lincoln shirts as we strolled around but nothing out of the norm. Most of the shops were just about to close up for the night but the guys did manage to dart in for a quick look in a couple of book shops. We were keen to see if Chris Sutton's autobiography was out yet as it could well sell out in Lincoln when it's released. It wasn't and so instead  Felice picked up the latest Rupert bear book to add to his collection. Given the choice of the two i would say that the Rupert book would be a much better read. We couldn't decide what to do next so took the only course of action available to us. Headed for the nearest pub to decide our next move. The nearest watering hole to us was a Weatherspoons and although it was nice enough, it was pretty much like every other Weatherspoons pub in the country.

We managed to pass an hour or so by playing various games on the quiz machine. Firstly we had a go on the Match of the day football quiz game and won precisely nothing. Now given that football knowledge is our strong point you would have thought we would have walked away then. But we weren't going to beaten that easily though and went on to play various other quiz games and again we had the same level of success. The phrase's "could do better"and "fools and their money are easily parted "sprang to mind. We were all getting rather peckish by now and went in search of a kebab before we headed over to the ground.
There were two kebab houses not too far away from where we parked the car so after much deliberation we opted for the Marmaris Grill Kebab shop on Duke street. The food was very nice and all cooked fresh. One quirk was the fact that only lamb dishes were available. I went for a standard large lamb conner and gave it a steady 8 out of 10 (£4.70). The mixed kebabs also got the thumbs up for Baz and Felice (£7). After we were all pleasantly full it was time to set off to find Holker Street; the home of AFC Barrow. On the way we passed by the home ground of the Barrow Hornets R.L.FC. From the outside it looks to be a similar size to that of the football ground.
Parking does appear to be a tad limited on Holker street so we parked up at the nearby 24 hour Asda. Baz was a little disappointed that we didn't go in to purchase a few cakes.

As we still had plenty of time to kill we decided to chill out in Barrow's clubhouse which is situated on the far side of the ground from where we parked up. Barrow's ground has a real old school feel to it and one that i quite like. We passed the away turnstiles and there already seemed to be a good few Imps fans milling around. Barrow's clubhouse is above the club shop and ticket offices. We popped into the shop and picked up a programme for £2.50. Although they didn't have any badges with just the club crest on they did have badges from the FA trophy final in 2010 on sale for 50p. I will have some of that. The shop had some pretty decent stuff in it and plenty of old programmes for Lee to rummage through. Braintree Gary would have loved it.
Barrow's club bar is called the "Cross Bar" (clever eh?) and has a nice view that overlooks the pitch. Both sets of fans are welcomed and mix freely without a hint of trouble. Its great this non league lark isnt it? The club is quite spacious and the kind of place that you could easily have a good session in. Teamsheets were on sale for a bargain 20p; its always nice when clubs do things like that. The two things that stood out from the teamsheet was that due to all their injury problems Barrow had only named 4 substitutes and secondly Kyle Perry was missing from the Imps squad which meant that Sam Smith was leading the line.

The programme was a cracking effort and although there were quite a few adverts in it, there were more than enough interesting articles to make it worth the price. The story about the time when Stenhousemuir came down to play a pre season match was the highlight. The story was made even better as Baz read it out in his best story voice.

It was £14 to stand tonight and an extra pound to sit in the stand to the right of the terrace where we were stood. After about 15 minutes or so the segregation was removed which meant you could stand anywhere which to me is what non league football should be about. A Barrow official came up and chatted to us about various things and explained that the only time that they enforce the segregation is when Fleetwood Town are the visitors. Even though you could go anywhere most of the Lincoln fans chose to stay in the corner of the ground where we had entered. Felice and i did wander over the other side for the warm up and the view was much better. The ground is quite old but has bags of character. The stand to our left was a covered terrace and seemed to be the most popular with the home fans. The stand to our right had the only seating in the ground and was shared between home and away fans. At the end opposite the one we were at was a shallow terrace. The bar was overlooking this end of the stadium.

Main Stand

Barrow hard core!

Leading up to the game Barrow had lost their last three games where as the Imps had taken 4 points for the last 6. Lincoln started the brightest and Sam Smith sent an effort crashing against the crossbar (the one on the pitch not the club bar) in the first couple of minutes.
That's pretty much as good as it got for City all game really. The first half was pretty uneventful. Gowling was getting us out of jail time and time again at the back and upfront very little was happening. Lincoln kept the ball slightly better but again failed to work Danny Hurst in the Barrow goal. MaCallum was having one of his off days and lost the ball far too often. It was the kind of game that had 0-0 written all over it. Sam Smith worked hard upfront but was left isolated far too often and was well marshalled by Adam Quinn who never put a foot wrong all game. Then in added on time at the end of the first half the game changed.
Danny Hone was adjudged to have handled in the ball in the box (it did look very harsh to say the least) and the ref pointed to the spot. Richie Barker stepped up and fired the ball home.
HT 1-0
This was a really sickener. We didn't deserve to be losing this match  nor did we deserve to be leading mind. City were really going to have to fight if they were going to get anything out of this.

In the end the second half was a total none event. I can not recall us creating a decent chance in the whole of the second half. Barrow didn't create a great deal either but they spent more time in our half of the field that we did in theirs. They just kept in simple and did the basics well no fancy stuff and no fuss.
They even took pity on us and had a man sent off and thus played the last nine minutes with 10 men. Not that it made much of a difference. We were a bit more purposeful as the final whistle approached but i could never see us scoring. The only shock of the second half was when a dodgy looking individual snuck off to purchase a tea and did not tell his travelling companions. Charming. No wonder he gets mistaken for other shady characters from time to time.
FT 1-0

After the final whistle when the players came over to the fans they got a mixture of applause and abuse. This was a dire performance from Lincoln and the tide is turning against the manager. Some here supported him some didn't. He/we really need to get some results fast.

And so after a crap performance we had the joys of a 3 hour plus journey to look forward to. To pass the time we had a variety of radio stations to listen to. Firstly we had Radio Five live for the nights football action, Although tonight it should have been renamed the Carlos Tevez and Manchester City show. Two rays of light in the football world for me were the news that Inter had recorded a fine away win in the Champions league 3-2 at CSKA Moscow, and that Rangers had also had a decent 2-0 home win over Kilmarnock.
So after about half an hour of Radio Tevez we had a spot of Bay radio and its crappy "Cuddle on the couch" hour of mushy love songs. Local radio really is stuck in a time warp. As we neared the Yorkshire border we switched to Real Radio.
Somehow the conversation switched from the dire Lincoln performance to Retford's former nightclubbing hot spot the Porterhouse (Dog house or Dogger to some) and the days when Baz and Felice would go up there in their white socks and black slip on shoes and party the night away and then finish the night off with a portion of Porterhouse chips! Those were the days apparently!!