Cod Almighty | Article

by Paul Ketchley

12 November 2003

It's pretty unusual for Town to have a full international in the team, far less someone who commands a reasonably regular place in a reasonably successful side as Wales are at the moment.

Barnard was one of Grovesie's first round of signings in the summer of 2002. Barnsley were in mega problems after their relegation and presumably couldn't afford his services. At the time Tony Gallimore occupied the left-back berth and Barnard was a bit of a peripheral member of the squad. Still, he scored a cracking goal at Brighton to give us our first win of that season and let us know what might happen if he had a chance.

Gallimore duly took the reverse trip to Barnsley at the end of the 2003 season, to the regret of few fans, and this meant Darren became the first choice left-back unless Wales made calls on his services - which became a frequent cause of absence in the Euro 2004 qualifying campaign.

Barnard is more of an attacking left-back and would probably play best as a left-sided wing-back in a 3-5-2 formation. Evidently his sophisticated tactical understanding had resulted in a couple of on-field spats with some of our new young centre backs, but to be honest he hasn't entirely resolved the glaringly obvious left-side defensive weakness known in recent seasons as Gallimore. We're just dogged 4-4-2 in style and it doesn't really fit in with what DB has to offer.

At the time of writing Wales are about to play Russia in the Euro 2004 play-offs, and let's hope that they do qualify for the trip to Portugal next summer so we'll all get the chance to see Barnard performing at the highest level of European football. Given that he was MoM for Wales against Serbia recently, maybe he's really just too good for Division Two, and hopefully he can help get us back to where we belong.