LEAGUE TWO. TUESDAY, 31st OCTOBER 2023.

Nightmare on Holker Street…

Morecambe crossed the bay to Barrow-in-Furness this Halloween to take on a team which has not been beaten in six previous League Two games at House of Horrors Holker Street. The two clubs have met loads of times over the years in various leagues and Cup competitions. But since the Bluebirds re-entered the EFL from the National League under the leadership of the appalling Ian Evatt three years ago, they have played just three times. The most painful of Barrow’s defeats so far this season must have been when Evatt’s Bolton Wanderers knocked his former club out of the League Cup by the only goal of the game away from home last August.

Morecambe won home and away against `Barrer’ in League Two during the 2020-21 season and followed that up with a three-one win in the fairly meaningless EFL Trophy at the Maz last month.

Barrow started the game tonight in eleventh place in the league and have won one and lost one of their five latest league games, the most recent ending 0-0 against Salford at this venue last Saturday. The Shrimps, on the other hand, arrived on the Furness Peninsula in sixth place in the table; five points better-off than Barrow and with one fewer game played so far.  Furthermore, Derek Adams’ men have won four of their last five League Two outings – most recently their 4-1 demolition of Wimbledon across the water in Lancashire last Saturday – and drawn the other one.

Former FC Halifax and Oldham Manager Pete Wild has been in the Barrow hot-seat since May last year. He guided the Bluebirds to a respectable ninth in the final table last season Here are his thought about tonight’s clash with Morecambe as recorded on the day prior to the match:

“First and foremost – well done to Derek. I think he’s put together another exciting young side that work really hard; a very industrious team. First thing we will have to do tomorrow night is match their effort because their effort is excellent – very good on the counter-attack. (They) get some really good numbers on the counter-attack. So I can see why they are doing well. But I think, first and foremost, they are giving everything they’ve got for their Manager. We’ve said tomorrow night that we have to match their intensity. We have to stop their threat on the counter-attack. Then we have to make sure that we go and impose ourselves on them with the numerous threats that we’ve got. I appreciate it is a derby. I appreciate everything that comes with that. We will have the players up for the game. But they should be up for every game – it shouldn’t take a derby – for the added spice; the extra performance – we need to make sure that we are up for every game and we are ready for every game. And that’s the big message I have been talking about this morning. I believe they are bringing a lot of fans. We need to make sure that it’s us who are here; it is us driving the team forward. Please do not underestimate how important that is: when the home fans get behind your team and drive your team forward. We will need that in abundance tomorrow night.”

Commenting on the recent loss to Morecambe in the EFL Trophy, he added:

“That wasn’t the greatest night for us. We sort of showed some of our cards to each other on that night. But it will be completely different personnel for both sides tomorrow night. What we have to do is make sure that the personnel we pick gets the better of them.”

Opposite Number Derek Adams had the following to say:

“We spoke about it this morning when we had a video analysis meeting. We spoke about our game on Saturday against Wimbledon and I said to them: “At five o’clock, that game was finished. It doesn’t matter what happened – we won the game and we move on.” What we can now do is look forward to Tuesday night’s game and be on top of it. No-one’s going to give us any thanks for the game on Saturday. We need to go to Barrow and get a positive result from the game. We are the only game in the division this week. We have got games in hand on the teams above us and this is one of our games in hand. Barrow will be thinking in a different way; they will be trying to catch us. They will be trying to say `they are on this long, unbeaten run’ and they will want to try and stop it. But we want to continue this long, unbeaten run. I know what long, unbeaten runs are all about. We had a forty-game unbeaten run when I was at Ross County getting into the Premier League. We have gone eight/nine games just now unbeaten. We want to continue and hold onto that. The players have shown that hunger.  We are in a good place – we’ve just got to perform tomorrow night.”

In the week that saw the excellent Matt Smith take over the reins from former `Head of Media and Communications” Dale Pryde-MacDonald, who has returned to Scotland, we all hoped he would have something wonderful to write about tonight. Instead – on the one night that spirits are supposed to be abroad – this was a spirit-less effort by Morecambe which only a team of skeletons could have made more gut-less..

It was appropriately grey and wet in and around Barrow most of today and the game was played in blustery and occasionally wet conditions perfectly in tune with the theme of a spooky evening. What followed after kick-off won’t linger long in the memory – this was a match of extremely poor quality. Three things contributed to this:

Firstly, the pitch was heavy and lumpy: a ploughed field in comparison to the billiard-board surface Morecambe are used to playing on across the bay at the Maz. These conditions obviously favoured the home team, who are used to playing on this boggy patch of grass. Having said that though – to use the old cliché – it’s the same for both sides and Barrow dealt with the conditions far better than their opponents did.

The second reason the game was a disappointment can be summed-up in two words which bring terror to our very souls. Forget Count Dracula; Edward Scissorhands, Frankenstein or even Ian Evatt (shudder!) – how about Diabolical Ben Speedie? This was the black-clad villain of the piece tonight. The Refereeing display this man put on this evening is quite simply one of the worst I have ever seen. He was a disgrace to his profession.

It would seem that Barrow were wearing the wrong studs tonight. Because virtually every time a man in a red shirt came anywhere near them, down they went. And inevitably, Mr Speedie awarded them a free-kick. This farce reached its climax in the first half. With twenty-eight minutes on the clock, Michael Mellon – who Barrow successfully targeted for a succession of crafty fouls all evening – finally got away from his marker. He was immediately pulled back by George Ray as he had a clear run on goal. Michael pushed the defender’s hand away – and guess what? – Ben Speedie gave yet another free-kick to Barrer. The Referee wasn’t up with play (was he ever?) and he simply either guessed or took the easiest option. Whatever, the officials clearly got this wrong collectively. The real irony of this mistake is that the resulting free-kick led directly to the only goal of the game for a team who should have been a man down for what had just happened.

But this wasn’t the only example of mistakes the Referee was responsible for this evening. Another glaring error – among too many minor ones to mention – happened in the second half. On the Morecambe left, Jordan Slew was fouled by Luca Stephenson and Mr Speedie actually awarded a very rare free-kick to the Shrimps. From it, Davenport passed the ball straight back to Jordan. He had his back to goal on the edge of the home penalty area. So he won’t have seen it coming when an accelerating Kian Spence went straight through the back of him with a foul which was both more obvious and worse than the one Stephenson had just committed. But the man with the whistle waved play-on; Barrow surged up the field and won a corner kick. Why? The whole thing is inexplicable. The Referee – as usual – was miles away from the incident. But his linesman wasn’t – why didn’t he put his flag up when the foul was committed? This sort of incident happened all night.  If the man in the middle had evened things up by penalising Barrow in the same way, you would think `well- he’s just incompetent.’ But he didn’t.  Yet again, you feel that King Derek’s consistent claim that Referees are swayed by away crowds to the disadvantage of `little old Morecambe’ is only too true.

With six minutes scheduled to play, there was another controversial moment. I don’t have access to a full tape of the match and this incident is not shown on the extended highlights. The Morecambe Twitter/X feed describes what happened as a `Stoppage in play as a Barrow player is wiped out by his own goalkeeper’. This might well be correct. But from where I sat, I thought Farman came off his line to punch an Eli King corner clear. I didn’t see any collision between him and anyone else. What I did see, however, was an inrushing Farrend Rawson challenging for the ball in the home penalty area and next thing, being flat on the ground. As I saw things, the player responsible for this – big central defender and Barrow Skipper Niall Canavan – made sure he went down too. Faz got up – but Canavan didn’t. He acted as if he was so badly injured that he might never walk again and I thought that anybody could see that he was simply play-acting. In my view, there was clearly absolutely nothing wrong with him. Whatever, not just one but two trainers rushed on, seemingly about to give the stricken Yorkshireman with the Irish name the Last Rites rather than the Wet Sponge, so desperately hurt did he seem to be. They eventually helped the poor cripple off the field – and my god, did he milk it.

The hiatus which ensued must have lasted at least three or four minutes as this melodrama was acted-out on the pitch. But lo and behold – a few minutes later and seemingly miraculously – he was as right as rain: he even forgot to limp any more. In my view, this episode was absolutely laughable. But what isn’t laughable – in my honest but perhaps mistaken opinion – is that he had managed to con the Referee out of conceding a penalty and possibly being sent off into the bargain. Whether Canavan had been clobbered by his own goalkeeper or not, it seemed to me that only an absolutely cast-iron moron – or someone who had just landed from another solar system – would fall for the sort of blatant play-acting which ensued from Canavan, whatever was the cause of it. But the gentleman wearing the black strip not only swallowed this bit of kidology lock, stock and barrel, he chose to restart the game with a dropped ball absolutely miles away from where he had stopped the play so that the Barrow Skipper could be attended to. Why? The whole thing is inexplicable. But this sort of incident recurred time and time again.

So what was the third reason the match was so disappointing from a Morecambe fan’s point of view? It was the Shrimps team itself. They were hopeless tonight. Mellon tried his best against all odds. Jordan Slew was actually effective most of the time and probably our best player overall but Derek took him off in the second half. JJ McKiernan spent the entire match falling over and claiming for fouls which usually hadn’t happened and was not indulged by the Referee. He needs to stay on his feet, stop cheating and concentrate on improving his game in my view. At the back, Morecambe looked disorganised a lot of the time. In midfield, Tom Bloxham was poor; constantly struggling to control the ball and regularly losing possession before he was finally taken off. Jacob Davenport kept giving the ball away often in dangerous situations – he was taken off as well after a truly feeble display. Joel Senior was booked early on and walked a tightrope after that – particularly when he was penalised for what I thought was a shoulder-charge on Elliot Newby but which the Barrer player inevitably made an absolute meal of. King Derek pulled him off before a red card made this eventuality by other means another inevitability. Dominic Telford got the better of Faz for most of the game. Jacob Bedeau was uncharacteristically weak tonight. Yann Songo’o worked his socks off but also made some very poor passes but the only shot I can remember from Morecambe all evening was one from him which only just missed one of the first floor windows in the social club behind the goal where the players come onto the pitch. This was after five minutes and it didn’t get any better tonight for the visitors. Adam Smith managed to get his hands to a fairly weak shot for the only goal of a dreary game but couldn’t do enough to keep it out. Apart from that, he had a good game and made a couple of really good saves. But I can’t remember Opposite Number Paul Farman in the home goal having a save to make all evening – in fact, I can’t remember him being troubled by anything the visitors were able to string together at any time. In truth, the team in the red strip were unrecognisable from the one which has enjoyed so much success – particularly on the road – in recent times.

What else is there to say? Barrow won the game after half an hour when Farman booted the ball long from a free-kick Barrer shouldn’t have been awarded; Emile Acquah flicked it into the centre as Bedeau made a totally ineffective and uncommitted attempt to challenge him and Dominic Telford – who had found space away from marker Rawson – got enough behind his relatively weak instant shot for Smith to be unable to keep it out of the net low down to his right. It was Telford’s first goal for his new employers and he won’t score many easier ones. The Bluebirds had another chance right at the start of the second half when Smith did well to save Acquah’s attempted lob only for Telford’s follow-up to be brilliantly cleared off the line by Rawson.

And that was it – Morecambe’s winning streak; one game in hand and their perfect record against Barrow all blown away into the darkness with the ghosts and the ghouls. Derek Adams – as ever – was brutally honest about his team’s Halloween Horrorshow this evening:

“Over the night, it wasn’t a classic football match. They had two attempts on target and we had one attempt on target and one of theirs has gone in tonight. We worked hard. We didn’t find solutions to the problems tonight; we couldn’t get any rhythm – and that’s probably credit to Barrow because they made it that type of game. It was a dull football match for having so many supporters in the stadium; it was disappointing. I thought at times we didn’t get some decisions that were correct. Maybe the one with Michael Mellon on the half-way line where he’s going to go though and he gets a foul against him. It’s probably an easy decision for the Referee to give a foul for Barrow because he’s the last man rather than give the foul for us: then he has to send him off. Over the night, we didn’t play like we can do. That sometimes happens. I think a draw would have been fair tonight. I can’t see any team deserved to win the game. We certainly didn’t and I don’t think Barrow did as well because they didn’t do enough to cause us any pressure in the game. ”

Barrow: 1 Paul Farman (Y); 4 Dean Campbell (3 Mazeed Ogungbo 80’); 5 George Ray; 6 Niall Canavan (C); 8 Kian Spence: 11 Elliot Newby; 16 Sam Foley (13 Tom White 62’); 17 James Chester; 18 Luca Stephenson; 19 Dominic Telford (10 Gerard Garner 70’); 20 Emile Acquah (14 Courtney Duffus 80’).

Substitutes not used: 12 Josh Lillis; 34 Ben Whitfield.

Morecambe: 21 Adam Smith; 3 David Tutonda (23 Max Melbourne 70’); 4 Jacob Bedeau; 5 Farrend Rawson; 6 Yann Songo’o; 7 Tom Bloxham (8 Eli King 55’); 9 Michael Mellon; 10 JJ McKiernan; 12 Joel Senior (Y) (2 Donald Love 45’); 14 Jordan Slew (11 Adam Mayor 55’); 16 Jacob Davenport (19 Ethan Walker 81’).

Substitutes not used: 26 George Pedley; 17 Cammy Smith; 20 Charlie Brown; 22 James Connolly.

Ref: Ben Speedie.

Att: 4,007 (862 from Morecambe.)