Phil Yelland looks into how Sutton United have got on during previous visits to Barrow ahead of this weekend's League Two meeting at The Dunes Hotel Stadium.
On Saturday we welcome our successors as National League champions last year, Sutton United, to The Dunes Hotel Stadium. We will, of course, be looking to avenge our 1-0 defeat at Gander Green Lane back in late November.
This will be the eighth time that we have met here in Cumbria and, so far, we are defending an unbeaten record of four wins and three draws.
Our first meeting on home soil took place in what was then the Vauxhall Conference back in October 1989 when we won 1-0 thanks to a penalty from Peter Farrell. We won the league encounter here again the following season, triumphing 3-1 with goals form Jimmy Capstick, Colin Cowperthwaite and Neil Doherty. However, The U’s avoided defeat for the first time here in the Bob Lord Trophy Final first leg in April 1991, in a game which saw local defender Paul Slater make his Barrow debut. We drew 1-1, with a Nigel Golley own goal being the Barrow counter. Sutton lifted the Trophy following a 5-0 second leg win but were relegated at the end of the campaign.
The teams did not meet again until 2016/17 in what had become the National League and the meeting here ended without a goal. The following season, there was another draw here when our scorer was former Sutton midfielder, Bedsente Gomis.
In October 2018, we returned to winning ways at home as Luke Burgess and Jack Hindle scored to help us to a 2-1 win over The U’s.
Our last encounter here was at the start of November 2019. Ian Evatt’s side had just won at Dagenham in midweek and the game was a real battle. I suspect few will remember Josh Kay’s winning goal, but many will recall being reduced to ten men when Jason Taylor limped off. Barrow ended up having to complete the game with centre-back Josh Granite playing on in attack despite a broken collarbone.
Let’s hope we can continue our good record here against Sutton on Saturday.