Barrow v Torquay United 21st April 2009

The ground may have seen better days - and the fans more biased than most - but Holker Street on Tuesday evening was a proper football ground watched by a real crowd who created a belting atmosphere. It was a pleasure to be there and - as has been said - the locals were incredibly friendly. I'm glad Barrow have stayed up.

Great pictures from Chris. I made it to Homes of Football in Ambleside on Thursday and this is how Stuart Clarke saw Holker Street in 2001:



Hundreds more Homes of Football pictures at www.homesoffootball.co.uk

Barrow's excellent Dock Museum currently has an exhibition by a local artist called John Duffin, son of a Barrow keeper of the 1960s. Here's his rather stylised view of Holker Street which forms part of an evocative collection of paintings of the town:



Years ago a friend of mine went off to become a sports journalist on the Barrow's evening paper, the rather grandly-named North Western Evening Mail. He always told me that Barrow is more a rugby town - as in Rugby League - than it is a football town. The "Raiders" - as they're now known - play in the second tier of the British game and won the Challenge Cup back in the 1950s. Just as there is a statue of Emlyn Hughes in the town, there is also one to Willie Horne regarded as their greatest-ever player. The club plays at Craven Park in the centre of town:



Earlier this season Barrow RLFC had a crowd of over 6,000 - the biggest in years - for the cup game against Wigan. I wonder how many of those doubled-up to be amongst the 7,000 who followed Barrow to Middlesbrough in the FA Cup?

Indeed, the existence of the rugby league club explains why the football team is usually referred to Barrow AFC - with the "AFC" having a local significance of its own that pre-dates the current craze for AFC this, that or the other.

Indeed, Fred "Ginger" Hughes, who went on the 1946 Great Britain tour to Australia. He "went north" - as they used to say in Welsh rugby - back in the 1930s. That doesn't happen now with union being the richer sport, does it?

Migration - of an earlier kind - built Barrow-in-Furness. Hardly anybody lived there until iron ore was discovered in 1850. From then onwards the population mushroomed as people flocked from all over the British Isles including - according to a display in the town's museum - Cornish miners (they got everywhere, didn't they?). For a while the town was even known as the "English Chicago."

The story of Middlesbrough is very similar. Hence "Ironopolis."