Reclaim The Holker Street
Happy New Year

December 29th

Leek Town certainly aren't local, but we thought we'd have a look to see if there was any real rivalry between Leek and Barrow.   Leek are probably best remembered as the team that Barrow beat 3-0 at Wembley in what was Barrow's finest hour and a half plus injury time.   So in essence there is little more than a general feeling of ambivalence towards Leek.   Now if the score had been reversed at Wembley, then that might have created some rivalry, but all in all we reckon there's only general apathy towards Leek on Barrow's fans' part.

Some Leek fans think there is a more intense rivalry.   Much of this opinion seems based on Barrow's fans' (over)reaction to an equaliser earlier this season at Harrison Park - incidentally one of the best grounds in the Unibond.   I was at that game and my opinion is that the Leek fans who forward this opinion are talking crap.   There was some increased rivalry last season when both teams having been relegated from the Conference were looking to go back up at the first attempt, but both clubs' inability to launch a serious title challenge has meant that even this rivalry as ambitious clubs has evaporated as time goes on and neither side are looking anything like likely to go up.   There was even an Xmas time meeting between the clubs last season - the usual criteria for a rivalry to exist, but this was more to do with Barrow's fixtures being announced late, rather than any antipathy between the clubs.

Sooooo, why are we looking at Leek?   Well, a couple of things about Leek do pi$$ us off, and the other is that they are apparently suffering from huge financial problems and we thought that was worth a closer look.

One thing that does annoy us about Leek as Barrow fans is their website's forum's moderator's inability to post a comment on a general site without reference to a bad experience he had at Holker Street some time ago.   No amount of reasoning will alter his negative opinion of Barrow as a club, team, place, whatever, because of the actions of a few mindless individuals who probably have no tangible connection at all with Barrow AFC.

So please, please, please, please, Richard, GIVE IT A REST! ! ! !   We'll even buy you a pint next time you're at Holker Street if you make yourself known.   Feel some REAL North Lancs hospitality.

Leek are currently suffering from huge financial problems with rumours circulating that they are about to face a winding up order.   There doesn't seem to be any particular pinpointed reason why Leek are in such dire financial straits.   After playing Conference football recently, Leek are desperate to get back, the crowds have inevitably dropped off as a result of relegation, and thus a valuable source of income has been lost making it difficult to survive.   Leek weren't one of the best supported clubs in the Conference and they had to compete against some much richer clubs, and thus debts arose.   Players have been let go, remaining players have had to take a wage cut, and Leek are near the bottom of the league, facing their second relegation in three years.

There seems to be no cohesion amongt the fans and officials of the club, with some people on the website threatening legal action and a lot of fans simply asking "what's going on?". We hope Leek survive because unlike some of their more vocal officials when Barrow's future was at stake, we can see the bigger picture.

At the moment Leek get crowds of between 3 & 400.   If Leek were to go under, then these people would probably be lost to non-league football forever.   They would probably be attracted to Premiership Football Plc.   Stoke City - aspirants to the hallowed sanctums of Premiership Football Plc - aren't too far away, and some fans might go there.   The majority though would probably get their football fix from live t.v., even if it does have Norwegian commentary on a Saturday afternoon.   These 3-400 fans deserve a local club, - even though it may not be playing at the level they want, - and they should learn a lesson from Barrow last year.   Get organised and get active, but most of all get together.

Good luck for the rest of the season.   Any club that takes its name from an ingredient of vegetable soup deserves to survive if you ask me.

December 30th

Now if you read last week's issue - and let's face it, who didn't - then you'll know that this game should have seen the launch of our Give it a Lash for the Cash where we give a pound between now and the end of the season for every goal that Barrow score.   And you can join in as well.   E-mail ushereif you wanna get involved in Give it a Lash for the Cash.

Well, it should have been, but it wasn't.   So, stuck with not much else to do, we thought we'd have a look at the league table.   What a surprise at the top.   Early pacesetters Alty have been caught up and well overtaken.   (Whaaaaaaaaaat? - Ed)   Oh, we'd better explaain we're not talking about the Unibond League Table, we're talking the sore losers league here, sponsored by

All the early running was set by Alty, some of the fans even resorting to complaining their referee was female when they didn't win a Cup game.   And all this enlightened thinking coming from a part of Manchester rumoured to be the centre of the universe by those at Doss Lane.   Then I've got to admit that Barrow put in a challenge blaming a whistle happy referee for the defeat at Gainsborough, when any sane man in black would have sent at least three Barrow players off.   Gateshead fans came with a late surge when they blamed a lack of atmosphere at an away game for their players' underachievement.   But now Hyde have gone way out in front, and it looks like they're so far out of sight that no-one can possibly catch them.

Gary Ingham shows  Hyde fans how bad  he really is

Following Hyde's 2-1 defeat at home to title challengers Stalybridge Celtic, a Hyde fan posted this on the Unibond forum.   "Gary Ingham is the worst keeper in the Unibond.......its just that Bridge have good defence."   Really?   We don't know Gary Ingham, we think he's a regular in the Stalybridge side.   If he is everpresent this season, he has let in 16 goals in 20 games.   Now we know that Hyde fans haven't won the championship in a while, but we reckon that not many championship challengers - Bridge have lost one game in 20 - carry passengers, especially not a keeper.   We play Stalybridge next week so we hope this Hyde fan's right but we doubt it.   Hyde fans also reckon that Ingham has the unfortunate habit of letting the ball "just goes through his legs" whenever the opposition shoots.   We don't like to give advice here at Reclaim The Holker Street, but can we suggest that Hyde fans face the pitch next time they are watching a game.

December 31st

Yes, you've guessed it.   We're about to go off on one.   But before we do we'd like to say that we think The Yeovil & Rushden Herald provides an excellent results and stats service.   The match reports are good, especially considering how many games they have to cover means someone with an affinity for the home club supplies the match analysis.   The quality of the articles is good as well.   We have got a minor gripe that Barrow's report at Gainsborough was missed out in favour of a report on a postponed match at Gateshead?!?   But given the result at Gainsborough we should be thanking theRushden & Yeovil Sun for that one.

We have jabbed on in recent weeks about the excessive coverage given to the cider boys from Ambrosia and Max's moneymen.   But we've got to say that this week's  none coverage of the unibond was ridiculous.

Yes, I know there were no Unibond games on at all, but we're not on about that, we're on about the almost total lack of coverage for any Unibond clubs this week.   We know that Barrow got a full page of coverage a few weeks back, but I seem to remember that the Rushden & Yeovil Star was late going on sale in Cumbria, and that this article appeared in conjunction with the paper's launch in the Furness area.   Cynical?   Not us.

So, where's our proof?   Wellllllllllll, let's have a look here.

Front Page	No problem there.   A general piece of blurb and an action photo from one of the few games that survived
	the weather.   Uh-huh, hang on a minute.   What's this Title Chase - Can Yeovillast the pace?   Page 30-32.
	Great, three whopping great pages on the cider boys inside.
Page Two	Four articles - none specifically related to the unibond.
Page Three	Coverage of two conference clubs - no real problem there, both newsworthy articles.
Pages 4-7	Match Reports - no problem
Page 8-9	Conference Preview - Full page on Rushden - and we know how much they need the publicity.
Page 9-13	FA Cup preview - no real problem, unless you argue that this is almost certainly gonna be given over to
	conference clubs because of the nature of the competition.   We'll let you fair minded people, the readers,
	decide whether or not that's weighted bias.
Page 14-15	Coverage of transfers of leagues at equivalent of unibond 1st division.   No problem with bias there, although
	we did think it was a bit pointless to list all the ins and hardly any of the outs.   One other article - none unibond
Page 16-18	Match reports
Page 19	Four Articles - none featuring Unibond Clubs
Page 20	Advert _ Whilst we don't agree with advertising in principle, we can't really complain about this.
Page 21-28	Review of the year. Two unibond clubs mentioned because they beat Conference clubs, but no unibond club
	warranted a sentence of their own until June.   Blyth, Worksop, Leek, Radcliffe and Runcorn  are the only
	Unibond clubs that warrant more than one sentence in the remaining six months of the year.  Photos include
	Jon Brady, Rushden, that man Patmore, ex-Yeovil manager David Webb, Yeovil manager, Colin Addison,
	Justin Jackson - Rushden and for good measure another one of Warren Patmore just in case you'd forgotten
	what he looked like whilst turning the page.   The preview of 2001 on the middle pages turned out to be a
	preview of the conference, and not the year as stated.
Page 29	A round up of news in six geographical areas and hip hip hip, the north west section is totally given over to the
	Unibond
Page 30-32	Three pages on Yeovil.   Another photo of Colin Addison. We gave up then but we did notice that the
	general midweek round-up on Page 36 did have the headline Hero Pennock is Yeovil toast.

What d'ya think?   Have we got it right or have we got it wrong?   Have your say by e-mailing us hereand we'll print your reply, but only if it comes with a full colour laminated photo ofWarrren Patmore.

January 1st

Well, today our "Give it a Lash for the Cash" scheme finally got kicked off.   If you remember we're sponsoring Barrow for a £1 a goal, in our quest to get Barrow shifted up the table.   And you can join in as well by emailing us hereand letting us know of your idea, whether it be sponsoring goal difference or whatever.   We reckon sponsoring Barrow for each penalty theyconcede might be a real money earner at the moment, seeing as how this was the third in three games.   It could be four, but we didn't get to the Bishop Auckland game so we're not too sure about that one. Anyway, as you can see from the graph on the left Barrow scored twice and so we're already into this malarky for a couple of quid.   But we're happy about that.   We're happy with the goals as well.   The first after four minutes from local lad Mike Mckenchie was pleasing for that reason alone.   And the second was a gem from Bulli.   On Radio Cumbria, Tony Hesketh reckoned that Bulli wouldn't score many more like that this season.   We're hoping that Bulli can prove that plonker wrong and stick away quite a few more between now and May.   A couple at Bowel Ford on Saturday will do us nicely.

January 2nd

On the Barrow website we've noticed over the course of time that several fans have complained about the coverage given to barrow by Radio Cumbria.   Several fans have responded positively to the coverage, but overall - and we're only going from memory here - we reckon there have been more fans giving it the thumbs down, rather than the thumbs up.   We don't live in Barrow anymore so haven't felt compelled to join in the discussion, but on the way home from the game on Monday we thought we'd give Radio Cumbria a go and hear for ourselves.

We didn't actually decide this until we were passing the Wildlife Park at Dalton, so we only heard about fifty minutes of the programme, but we reckon that was enough to form a considerd and reasoned opinion and it's a big

From what we can gather there had been a full match commentary on Barrow's game.   Now we know that Carlisle was postponed, and no doubt had their game been on, then that would have been given the full treatment, but even so, we reckon that some stations would ignore non-league footie whatever had happened to the league clubs' fixtures.   Most Unibond clubs must be envious of that type of coverage.   I understand that at least one Unibond Cup game was given full commentary last season as well.   Although, that's gotta be offset against Barrow not getting full commentary when the 1st Round of the Cup was on - games at the same level, and us already having achieved something by having got there.

For the most part, the programme we listened to was centred around a phone in.   There were four phone calls in all if I remember rightly - five if you count one guy who rang in twice.   Two of the calls were from Barrow fans, both of them youngsters and the presenter - I didn't catch his name - chatted with them for a while, and he seemed to have a good knowledge of the club, knew about Hall's recent signing, and he wanted to talk about footie with them.   He was constantly asking for Barrow fans who had been to the game to ring up, and by Newby Bridge we were feeling quite sorry for him.   Having done a little bit of work in local radio we know how disheartening it can be when you aren't really sure if anyone is actually listening, - a bit like hearing that Morecambe have won again, even if it was against Scouseport.

Also on the programme was a match summary from Ron Duxbury which was repeated later on, I guess because they weren't getting all that many calls coming in.   There was an interview with Kenny Lowe, where he talked about the money problems not being over, about how the players had taken a wage cut, and about how he thought Barrow could have won the game.   Next up, they had Tony Hesketh on, talking about his return to Barrow, Lancaster's chances for the rest of the season, and about how he thought that Lancaster could have won the game.   He might not get too much of an arguement from us there, but where he was stretching credibility was when asked about the reception that Neil Morton got, Uncle Tony said that Neil would take it in his stride as Neil was a very sensible, lad.   WhaaaaaaaT?!??!*!??!!!

So that was it.   And we thought it was better than not bad.   Seeing as how the Carlisle game had been called off, we might have caught them on a good day, but we can only go on what we heard with our ears so we've gotta say, - well done.   Our only other experience of Radio Cumbria is from last season when after some postings on the website saying about how the presenter had been practically begging Barrow fans to call in, I rung up about ten games into last season.   I was on for about five minutes going back and forth between Ron Duxbury at Holker Street, and the presenter in Carlisle.   Another Barrow fan came on after me and the discussion and crack was quite a good one.   I reckon that there was in effect a good twenty to thirty minute programme there on solely Barrow, which we didn't reckon was too bad.

The programme didn't seem inundated with calls so we reckon that all it would need is half or dozen or so Barrow fans to make it into a programme that gives more much needed publicity to Barrow.   By our maths we reckon that more publicity = more fans.   It might lead to Radio Cumbria giving Barrow more coverage in the way of news, reports and even commentaries.   And by our maths we reckon that more publ........(give it a rest - Ed).   It might be the most harebrained idea you've heard all of this year but if you don't do owt, don't bleeding say owt.

January 3rd

Barrow v Workington - Match Postponed

Fixture congestion means that Barrow and Workington
draw straws to see who goes through in the Unibond Cup

January 4th

After a day on the warpath, Pauline Fowler takes matters into her own hands.   Pat Butcher reels from Roy's unexpected decision.

We would like to here from you.   If you wish to contribute to this E-Zine then please get in touch withusWe are looking for anything, articles, funnies, much needed technical advice (and probably legal advice - Ed), whatever.

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