The story of how four AFC fans took the campaign to admit Barrow to the UniBond to the enemy and how it became a sticky business at Altrincham...
ALTRINCHAM 2 STALYBRIDGE CELTIC 0 UniBond League Charity Shield 7 August 1999 by MC Messenger
Everyone has heard of the Charity Shield, contested by the winners of the Premier League and the FA Cup as a curtain raiser to the new season. What fewer have heard of is the UniBond's own equivalent, imaginatively titled the UniBond Charity Shield. It pits the previous season's winners of the UniBond Premier League against the winners of the UniBond League Cup for the honour of holding the Peter Swales Memorial Trophy. This season saw Altrincham take on Stalybridge Celtic. Even less well known this season was the truth about Barrow AFC's desperate struggle to be accepted into the UniBond Premier League. Fans of non-League clubs, not just Barrow, were posting messages to one another on the Internet based on half-truths and guesswork while the press was full of misinformed opinion. I wanted to try to get the real facts of Barrow's case to the fans of other clubs in the UniBond, so I posted a message on the Barrow Fans' Forum asking if anyone would be interested in attending the Charity Shield game at Moss Lane to mount a peaceful protest. I hoped that maybe fifty or a hundred Barrow fans in replica shirts holding flags and banners, expressing how we felt about the appalling way we've been treated, would let Duncan Bayley and the rest of the UniBond suits know that Barrow fans cared about their club and would not be beaten so easily. Others seemed to have different ideas. Talk of mass marches, a huge police presence and the threat of violence made me call it off on the Friday afternoon. Nevertheless myself and three mates decided to go anyway and see what happened. We made some placards and arrived in Altrincham fearful of being given a hard time by the Alty faithful. We needn't have worried. On the walk to the ground we saw ex-Barrow players Dave Higgins and Gary Bauress, now with Stalybridge, who were very supportive. They hoped we might stage a pitch invasion at half-time as they thought they might be too knackered to play any longer! Coming out of the pub by the ground was our old manager Owen Brown. He wasn't inclined to join us, giving a knowing laugh before he disappeared into the stand. Scouse git! Inside the boozer we got some funny looks, but isn't that always the case when you're in a Barrow shirt? A Belper Town fan was looking forward to a mass demo and full scale riot. He was disappointed to find there were just four of us. He couldn't understand why we weren't being allowed in the Conference and we corrected him about Barrow not being a new club, a point we had to correct many times that afternoon. Closer to 3pm we split up, thinking we could get our point across better to fans all round the ground than if we stayed together and found ourselves fenced in at one end. But there was no segregation and fans of both sides mixed freely. We held up our placards. 'BARROW - CAN THE FA MAKE IT STICK?' 'JUSTICE FOR BARROW' and 'NO BARROW, NO UNIBOND'. People started to ask us what we were doing, why we were there and what was happening to Barrow. That was exactly the response we had hoped for. But oh how I wish the liquidator's statement had been published in Ralph Sheppard's Holker Street Newsletter by then. It would have saved our vocal chords an awful lot of strain and effort. The response was pretty good once we'd overcome the blind ignorance of most people. They understood why we shouldn't be relegated through four divisions to the NorthWest Trains League Division Two. But many parts of the media were saying that Barrow were a new club. People's perceptions of the facts were blurred by inaccurate reporting. The Stalybridge chairman gave us his support, Vic Halom's father-in-law was for us and the woman in the burger bar was originally from a street in Barrow now covered by Hollywood Park. A vocal group of Alty supporters applauded us and shouted messages of support. Given the way they were treated when they last visited Holker St this was somewhat surprising! Near the end (Alty won 2-0 with a peach of an own goal from Dave Higgins) we moved over to the main stand so the suits would be aware of our protest. Altrincham's officials helped us find a good position from where we were clearly visible to Duncan Bayley, secretary of the UniBond League. "Any comment, Mr Bayley?" I yelled. He stared at my placard and a wee smile stole across his lips. We stayed there all through the presentations until the Manchester Evening News took our photo and Tony Glennon of the Pink did a short interview. Even Bernard Taylor came over and shook our hands. "Anything I can do to help lads, anything at all, just call me." All in all not a bad day's work. We'd left the suits in no doubt about our feelings, educated a few hundred Mancunians and got our picture taken. If only Chorley had been so welcoming... Originally appeared as 'A Sticky Business: Protest at Alty' in issue 041 - October 1999