The Voice - Match preview Barrow vs Bradford City Tuesday 23 April 2024 7.45pm (with exciting New Poll)

Mainly Bristol..... Wetherby for them Navy boys....

 

Looking at the rearranged date, due to other midweek fixtures for City and Barrow, it will either be Tues 19th March, or 9th, 16th or 23rd April.

I would imagine they’ll avoid Tues 26th March as that leads into to Bank Holiday weekend with Friday and Monday games coming up.

 

Brings back memories Two, three or four car DMU service trains on Friday night to Stockport etc were something to behold . Then there’s Halifax , Bury , Rochdale to add to the mix !

 

Could get train to Morecambe and then a cockle picking vessel over to Barrow.

 

Remember doing Walsall and Carlisle aswell

 

Don’t remember those Chippy . Other than localised in Yorkshire/ Lancs and the special trains to Norwich , it was either Wally Arnold or Patsy’s CTC73 . ( It was quite normal to see it raining rocks )

 

Do you remember Walsall away during the time of the Yorkshire Ripper.
Someone pulled the communication cord and we had to run along the railway line towards Fellows Lane or Park were the Saddlers used to play we missed the kick off I remember rightly.
Happy days following City.

 

That’s not a train away day I recall tbh, I believe Walsall away once and it was coach . There were so so many. Just remembered Chesterfield away by train was another regular, as was Barnsley.

 

Yeah. Had a train at 7. We were told it might be ok to go earlier but at discretion of the conductor. Could have made it very expensive if we were unlucky.

 

I had same issue , I took the chance with it as they said it should be okay at Barrow , didn't fancy another 4 hours up there like all of seriously pee'd off , ticket checked on Preston train and got through barriers at Bradford, guess I got lucky , no chance for re arranged game though

 

Apparently the ref stayed in a hotel in Barrow on Friday night, which makes this even more infuriating for everyone except the officials! Absolutely abysmal by the EFL, to not even make a statement to acknowledge Barrows complaint totally sums them up. They look after their own, everyone is untouchable. The ref should be struck off

 

Surely the blame for this is with Barrow ?

They blindly assumed the pitch was playable and didn't bother calling the ref in early. It's not up to him to turn up early and inspect the pitch of his own volition, and Barrow could easily have made him aware if they had either looked at it properly or talked to their groundsman.

I don't blame the ref or the EFL, and can see exactly why they have just batted away the complaint. My guess is the whole issue was probably brought to his attention by Graham Alexander, who saw the state of that patch and was concerned for his players.

 

Football is getting as bad as cricket or tennis now where fans regularly buy tickets, pay for hotels and travel to an event that is cancelled due to either weather or unsafe playing surfaces.
There must be some kind of insurance you can buy to protect against these kind of losses.

 

You can't blame Barrow for EFL refs inconsistency. If it was fine to play on the last couple of homes games as it was, why would Barrow check to see if it was playable? There was a comment in here that the Barrow GK had said it's better than what it had been.

 

That is not the case. The first GA knew of it was when the team coach arrived at the ground and he was called to the pitch by the match officials. This has been stated in various news articles over the weekend.

 

Safe to assume you weren't one of the travelling fans then(!)

Why would Barrow bring it to the ref's attention, if they hadn't previously seen it as an issue themselves?

Do refs do their due diligence, and look at the refs report from the previous match to see if there were any concerns raised about the pitch?

And as for blaming GA, well as @Wakefield Bantam said previously, he knew nothing about it until arriving at the same time as most of us so that is a load of tosh isn't it

 

Say what you like, but if a ref isn't due to arrive at the ground until 1.30 what can he do about it ? As for being playable the week before, that's rubbish. Barrow are the one's who should have done due diligence on the pitch not the bloody ref. It's their responsibility to get the match on and his responsibility to keep the players safe.

As for not being one who travelled, how does that make a difference in the decision to call a match off ?

It's pretty clear, the ref arrived at the match, on schedule, went onto the pitch and deemed it unsafe. In what world does the late postponement become his fault ? People blaming the ref are looking for a scapegoat.

 

I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault per se because Barrow clearly thought the pitch was playable. To the naked eye it looked perfect but the ref wasn’t happy so that’s that.
Maybe we can stop calling our games off 24 hours early and let the match referee assess the pitch at 2pm / 6.45pm in future.

 

How can anybody possibly blame the referee?!

In case people are forgetting, League Two refs aren't professionals. They have normal day jobs and ref a EFL match on a Saturday. It's absolutely not down to them to be monitoring the pitch over the course of the week - what do you think clubs have groundsmen for?!

For those babbling about the ref turning up the night before - if you are sent to the pits end of the UK for a meeting and you're given expenses for a hotel stop the night before, you're not going to spend that night before inspecting the meeting room are you?

The club (Barrow) incorrectly deemed the pitch playable. If there were any doubts - which any diligent groundsman would have had - they should have called a local ref for a precautionary inspection as is the standard practice. They then make themselves look like idiots by declaring the pitch is fine so they will hold an open training session.. by cordoning off the affected area of the pitch. You couldn't make it up.

And then people are saying the REF is the one who should be struck off? Some people never cease to amaze me, seriously.