On a weekend when others were living the FA Cup dream it was back to consolidating our position in the league at Gainsborough Trinity. The game started brightly for our hosts with Stamp blasting an effort wide followed by a Cook effort at our end of the ground there were a couple of other opportunities where the Barrow defence held firm with Burns clearing the threat. It wasn’t long before we started to get a foothold and with Alex Ray Harvey controlling the game the chances were starting to be created, Cook was unlucky on a couple of occasions and Pilkington had a long range effort wide of the mark. It was Andy Cook with the breakthrough we had all hoped for on 21 mins, finishing well after good work by Jamie Ellison. That’s the way it stayed until halftime despite further efforts from Izak Reid and Ellison and our overall dominance.
The second half started with Barrow still in control of the game and the impressing Ellison fired just wide and it wasn’t long before the lead was doubled with Pilkington on the break being brought down just outside the area and from the resulting free kick he beat the Gainsborough keeper to give us a bit of breathing space on 53 mins.
A reckless two footed challenge by Davis on Andy Burns resulted in a sending off for the Gainsborough player and thankfully after treatment the again impressive Burns returned to the action. A reshuffled Gainsborough team now playing with a bit more fire and determination and venom in the tackle started to cause a few problems.
Barrow replaced Ellison with Jason Walker with around 20 mins to go, before Pilkington saw another effort go wide of the post. Johnny Gorman now on for Reid had a free kick punched away by Budtz and Cook blasted another effort wide of the net.
It was now Gainsborough’s turn to have their brightest spell of the match with McMillan pulling off a great save from Davie and this was shortly followed by a blocked clearance close to the line by Walker after the otherwise faultless Paddy Lacey fluffed a clearance inside the box.
Barrow held on and a jubilant Andy Cook really enjoyed his post match celebrations much to the annoyance of some of the Gainsborough supporters.
