Decisions being made

[Wintergreen]

Yes, lowest home crowds for each of the first five NPL seasons: 255, 143, 200, 281, 262 (E&OE) - a tribute to those who kept the club going, really.

The club fanbase dropped off massively going into non league. Relegation, combined with what was a golden age in Div 1, I would imagine many fans started following Man U, Liverpool during these years. We never recovered from it.

A common attitude of the time was ‘I’m not paying good money to watch local players that l can watch for free at Vickers or Holker’. Queer really; I think there is a lot more togetherness these days.

[mall]

Brian McManus did score in a 2--1 win, we finished next to bottom 23rd one of five teams to finish on 33pts in those days it was goal difference,Fleetwood finish bottom and resigned from the league, the crowd was 484 and I was at the game. In those days the NPL had re election so no relegation.

He was a good player.
Not sure if that was a match towards end of the season and Scarborough had a FA Trophy Final to play,Neil Warnock.was there.

Come to think of it, I think Scarborough had just won the trophy and when they came to Barrow they brought the trophy with them and paraded it around the ground after the final whistle to warm applause from most of us.

[DerbyDave]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... -533656417
I posted in the Daily Mail my thoughts on Barrows current situation
Seems many agreed with me , and I don't assume they are all Barrow supporters

Whilst not much of a facebook fan , I do have an account , and occasionally it has its uses . I sent a message to the EFL basically saying what I said in the DM , a real chance exists for the EFL to gain some respect , to do the right thing ,and make up for the injustice of 1972 , the Barrow Football Club have earned this , the people of Barrow , their club thrown out of the Football League because a few Chairmen from rival clubs thought it would be nice to save a few quid on travel costs by getting rid ..there was no other plausible explanation

Yes , I support Derby , but I am a Football fan with a soft spot for other clubs , Barrow included . Even as a 12 year old Lad looking at the final league Table of 1972 and seeing Barrow getting thrown out instead of Crewe , I knew something smelt , something was just so wrong

The Suits and the Men of Influence at AFC Barrow must not let this rest
Cheers everyone ..and Good Luck

[Suffolk Blue]

Thanks DerbyDave. We remain forever hopeful, despite the fact that history has not treated us very well. I think the Mail article is basically a rehashing of an interview that IE gave a few weeks ago re-presented in the light of current NL activity.

Some of us are at that point where we attach more importance to what the EFL might do to make up their full compliment of clubs than any faith we might have on the outcome of a free vote by National League members. In that respect any support we get from EFL member clubs or their fans is very welcome.

[Wintergreen]

Thanks DD much appreciated and kind of uplifting that there is a wider appreciation out there of what happened to us. The only connection between Derby and Barrow l can think of would be local boy done good Glenn Skivington who played for both clubs. Do you remember Glenn at all?

[Suffolk Blue]

Thanks DD much appreciated and kind of uplifting that there is a wider appreciation out there of what happened to us. The only connection between Derby and Barrow l can think of would be local boy done good Glenn Skivington who played for both clubs. Do you remember Glenn at all?

Well I suppose we should acknowledge that IE started out in Pro football at Derby. But there are other connections. Here is a programme from 12th January 1957, from the 3rd Division North. It was at a time when Derby had dropped down to this level for a very short period. As you can see the game ended 3-3 - what would we give for that these days!. The Barrow team on that day included a trio of Keen, Cahill and Gordon real candidates for legendary status.

This was very much one of BAFCs better squads. A week earlier they had turned out in the Third Round of the FA Cup at Sheffield United who were then in Division 1. Many, many years later I found myself sat around a swimming pool in the Caribbean with an old chap who turned out to be Peter Wragg who played for the Blades that day and regaled me with his memories of it.

[Suffolk Blue]

Correction. I've got 1956 and 1957 mixed up. The game against the Blades was in January 1956. 7 of the 11 appearing on the Derby programme played against the Blades the year before but no Keen.

[Jim]

See who was bottom of the league in that programme. Just like 1972

[pjdaly]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footb ... -533656417
I posted in the Daily Mail my thoughts on Barrows current situation
Seems many agreed with me , and I don't assume they are all Barrow supporters

Whilst not much of a facebook fan , I do have an account , and occasionally it has its uses . I sent a message to the EFL basically saying what I said in the DM , a real chance exists for the EFL to gain some respect , to do the right thing ,and make up for the injustice of 1972 , the Barrow Football Club have earned this , the people of Barrow , their club thrown out of the Football League because a few Chairmen from rival clubs thought it would be nice to save a few quid on travel costs by getting rid ..there was no other plausible explanation

Yes , I support Derby , but I am a Football fan with a soft spot for other clubs , Barrow included . Even as a 12 year old Lad looking at the final league Table of 1972 and seeing Barrow getting thrown out instead of Crewe , I knew something smelt , something was just so wrong

The Suits and the Men of Influence at AFC Barrow must not let this rest
Cheers everyone ..and Good Luck

Derby Dave – although I appreciate your sympathetic outlook towards Barrow's demotion from the FL in 1972 I'll respond to your post, and your comment "there was no other plausible explanation", in a controversial manner . . .

Firstly, let me say I have been a regular at Holker Street since my Dad first took me along in 1962 as a 6-year-old kid. In the 58 years since then I have missed very few home matches and attended regularly even in the early Non-League seasons alluded to earlier in this thread, when attendances dropped to below 300. I'm telling you that just to assure you that I'm not merely an occasional fan of the club in the good times, nor would I ever want to do them down for some spiteful reason.

And yet . . . here's the controversial bit . . . I hold no grudges about losing our place in the FL in 1972, painful though it obviously was. Superficially I agree that it looks dodgy because we only finished third from bottom of the league. But there were other factors at work; probably one was because we held the record for the number of re-election bids made by any club for finishing in the bottom four. However, the main one in my mind was because (and this does not show in the final league placings) we destroyed our ground and our pitch in the spring of 1972 to accommodate a speedway track. These developments were already taking place before the season ended; for instance, the Steelworks terrace (where the Crossbar now stands) was already rubble while FL matches were still going on in March/April of 1972. You really had to be there to witness the scale of the fiasco. When we did drop out of the FL and started up in the Northern Premier League the grass corners had to be removed for every Speedway Meet and then laid back down on wooden boards for soccer matches.

The pitch and the ground were in such a shocking state that in one match against Stafford Rangers in 1973 the goalposts at the by then razed Steelworks End actually collapsed during the course of the match. We did manage to stick them back up again and finish the match, which Bill Fairer would have been relieved about as he scored our winner that day.

Here's the crunch though . . . if we thought being ejected from the FL was ignominious enough we narrowly averted the same thing happening to us by the NPL. Rumours were rife, especially after our first season in non-league, that even the NPL wanted rid of us. That league also had re-election in those days if a club finished in the bottom two. In the first season in the NPL, 1972-73, we did indeed finish next to bottom, in 23rd place. Obviously we survived, but the next season the feeling towards us was reaching boiling point and the rumours were strong that we would not get re-elected if we finished in the bottom two again. A sort of miracle then happened! In the second half of the 1973-74 season (after a shocking first half of that term) we somehow managed to claw 50% of the points on offer to us in the last 21 games of that season. We finished in 22nd place, just outside the bottom two. Our player-manager was Peter Kane and I have often remarked that one of the heroes of our history was a manager who managed to guide us to the giddy heights of 3rd from bottom of the NPL in that make-or-break season of 1973-74! An astonishing achievement in the circumstances in which Kane was operating!

So I've never wasted time with a burning chip on my shoulder over losing our place in the FL in 1972. I saw with my own eyes what happened to the ground and the pitch. I look much, much closer to home for the culprits. We were the architects of our own demise, not the FL, not Hereford. Yes, I imagine we must have been desperate for money to introduce a ground-wrecking project such as the Speedway into Holker Street but I have often wondered at exactly when, and exactly how, a wave of unfathomable insanity came to take hold in our very own boardroom to give the green light to such a kamikaze motion as the Speedway. I know I am in a minority as most feel "we woz robbed, we weren't even bottom in 1972" but the final League positions don't tell the whole story. Not even half of it! But I'll tell you what . . . after 48 years it would be great to get back to where we once belonged!

[DerbyDave]

Your post obviously commands respect mate , as an outsider and given your loyalty , no arguments from me .. the return of Barrow to the Football League remains a great story (hopefully for us Football romantics !

[DerbyDave]

Great replies thanks Suffolk Blue and Wintergreen ..and yes I remember Glenn ..

[Dexter]

13 of those teams are now non league.

[Suffolk Blue]

17 if you include teams that have made it back to the EFL in the intervening years having previously dropped out.

[Suffolk Blue]

I can also see 5 teams that went on to play in the First Division/Premiership. Can anybody see them and place in the order they first appeared in the Top flight?

[Nigel Bamford]

I can also see 5 teams that went on to play in the First Division/Premiership. Can anybody see them and place in the order they first appeared in the Top flight?

Derby Co 1969
Carlisle 1974
Oldham 1991
Bradford C. 1999
Hull C 2013