Get with the Barrow programme

Cod Almighty | Article

by Various

25 January 2025

It's always sunny in Southern California but it's always raining in West Cumbria. Miss Guest Diary trawls through the archives and her own memories to talk about Barrow

In Cleethorpes it never rains, but it pours goals.

Last season I confessed in one of my diaries that I had "never been to Barrow's ground and I don't think I ever will. Call me a soft southerner, if you like, but in my mind it's simply too far north. I am happy to go up to Newcastle on the east coast but the west side of the country north of Blackpool just seems too remote and far away."

It seems I am not alone in this experience. Back in 2015 Middle-Aged Diary told us that he is "keen to take in this match one day… but if the game isn't midweek, it coincides with rail engineering works. Barrow is too northern and too western to still be in the north-west. Like Grimsby, it needs some new point of the compass to describe it. We don't really belong on land at all. We are honorary areas of the Shipping Forecast."

Oddly enough though, Barrow-in-Furness loomed large in my north London childhood. One of my aunts and her children were evacuated there during the Blitz and after the war returned every year for a holiday with their hosts. What effort that must have taken in terms of travel by public transport can only be imagined. The highlight for me was that every year my aunt brought back a tub of Cumberland rum butter – a delicious and exotic confection previously unheard of down South. When her hosts eventually died they bequeathed their house to my aunt – but that's a whole other story.

There are always some hardy fans willing to travel the length and breadth of the country but the fact that for only two of Town's six visits to Holker Street since 2010 have Cod Almighty been able to secure an on-the-spot reporter tells its own story. And one of those reporters lives in the north west anyway. Both comment in their reports on the lushness of the pitch – possibly due to the levels of rainfall in the area. Ah, rain, we can't talk about Barrow without mentioning the weather

Michael Shelton, in telling us about his Town life, relates the story of his wettest ever game watching Town:

"Barrow away, January 2012. I had been working in Manchester that afternoon and headed straight over from work. I had no umbrella, no coat, the terrace was uncovered and the weather was atrocious. The grey suit I was wearing was ruined and never worn again. Having seen Barrow equalise twice (the second time in injury time, whilst down to ten men) I splashed miserably back to my car, peeled off my sodden clothes and drove back to Leeds in nothing but wet boxer shorts with the heater on full blast."

In October 2022 Sarah Barber "had to ask a Bluebird friend (no, he didn't know why, either: the only thing that sits on your shoulder in Barrow is rain) to get us tickets." It rained, we lost. We always do there - apart from that time we didn't, but no-one was there as it was during Covid.

In contrast Town have lost only one game at home to Barrow, in 1967, notching up 17 wins and three draws. Are we their bogey team? Our last encounter at Blundell Park was also Town's last victory under the management of Paul Hurst. How it was achieved is anybody's guess with the performance described by our match reporter as follows:

"Town were battered by their betters. Has a jelly ever wobbled so much without collapsing? We can't always rely on the kindness of strangers. But so what, we won. You don't always get what you deserve."

Let's talk about Pete Wild's side, a thing that made our match reporter almost sing their praises:

"With a hassle here and hustle there they never once gave it away, though they couldn't quite make Town pay. What a sumptuous soufflé, what a magnificent meringue, the Wild Boys oozed deliciousness from every pore. Between each box they were desirable, irresistible, super sexy, such cuties, but oh-oh-oh they cannot shoot.

The Barrowboys are like a souped-up Town on a good day, with knobs on, turned up to eleven. They even miss better: higher, wider and more often.

Too good to be forgotten, what more can I say, their shirts were shiny..."

Though it hasn't always been so, for our early non-league encounters left us a little colder. After a dull draw in 2010 we concluded "you should draw curtains, not football games" and our Accentuate the Positive feature observed: "We saved 15 minutes of wasted life by remembering that Carr Lane was still closed."

And in the next season after another dire draw: "If you want positivity lick a light bulb"

Ah-ha, but then we bought Bogle and Amond and we started to soar. A 4-1 win in August 2015 set the tone with the shape of things to come:

"The Barrowboys kicked off towards the Pontoon with a quack and a waddle and a flurry of eiderdown. Hustle and bustle, a deep furrowed frown, Andy Cook's feathers were all stubby and brown.

Arnold smash, Amond slash, let's Bogle-boogie all night long.

I think we're displaying the first symptoms of Bogle Fever. He's getting better all the time: holding them down, turning them round.

With Bogle's power and Amond's quick brain, Arnold's quick feet and Monkhouse's head there's something in the air. The revolution's here, and you know it might be right this time."

And from then on Town put their pedal to the metal and just kept on winning no matter what. After the last win, last year, we were so embarrassed we offered to send them a sympathy card: “Sorry for your loss, thinking of you in these sad times, chin up, there's always next year."

That's football. There's always another game.

These are the full versions of the Cod Almighty programme articles for the 2024/25 season. An edited version was published in The Mariner on 14 September 2024.