Harrogate Town opinion: Sulphurites' display at Barrow definitely wasn't worth upsetting my wife over

I spent much of last week in Newby Bridge, a mere 28 minutes and 18 short miles from Barrow.

Now I know what you’re thinking, dear reader, but you’d be wrong. It wasn’t a cunning holiday move to be close to Harrogate Town’s visit to Holker Street at the weekend. Truth is, I hadn’t even realised my team were due to be in Cumbria when we’d booked the break two weeks previously.

Once I did cotton on, I casually dropped the fact of the nearby match into the conversation some days before and my daughter visibly winced in the background.

As I’ve explained previously, downtown Barrow-In-Furness isn’t the ideal place to take your wife on the last day of your holiday and I knew it was a non-starter.

Even though we were based in a hotel where visiting football teams often stay the night before, and there was a huge green road sign pointing the way left to Barrow when we exited the hotel car park on the Saturday morning, it was to the right and the beautiful market town of Kendal that we turned.

I did manage to lose my bearings and attempt to head off in the Barrow direction when we eventually left Kendal after a lovely lunch, but my wife saw through that ruse straight away. Well, she thought she did, for it had been a genuine mistake. Either that or Town were pulling me back into their orbit.

So flat was the performance against League Two’s early surprise package, that Simon Weaver apologised to the 49 fans who’d passed me in the opposite direction for wasting their time.

I’ll accept his apology too, even though it wasn’t aimed at me, as it’s 90 minutes I’ll never get back whilst listening to it on the radio.

Yes, we may have only gone down to a solitary, freak, wind-assisted goal, but there was just nothing to get excited about from an attacking perspective until the final minutes when we finally managed a shot on target. I feel that Barrow’s attacking 4-3-3 formation won the day tactically.

In direct contrast, the previous Tuesday night’s 2-0 away win in our first ever competitive match against Gillingham, was a performance full of endeavour, crisp passing and attacking intent.

Even the home commentators were full of praise for our performance, acknowledging that we got the job done against a home side struggling to score, whilst tempering their comments with the thought that we wouldn’t be the best side Gillingham faced this season.

So we remain inconsistent as the new players bed in, and firmly mid-table. It often helps to view yourselves through the prism of others, and maybe the Gillingham commentators have it about right.

Last week’s column about ticket prices at Town, compared to the other League Two clubs, garnered quite a response. You had to read it online to get the full article, as it was so long that the end of the piece was edited out in the print version. This is the bit that was lost…

‘Town’s cheapest season ticket offer to U12s is by some way the worst in the division. The £129 offer was over three times the average price. Only four clubs topped £50 and they were all still at least £49 below Town’s price. Four clubs even let this age group in for free if their parents bought a season ticket at the same time.

The conclusions to be drawn from my research are simple.

Town have succeeded in aligning match day admission prices with other clubs in the league. Whether they should be doing this when they’re seeking to grow the support base from a historically low level, is a debate to be saved for another day.

Many of the established league clubs we’re up against have baked in traditional support through thick and thin. Town can’t yet draw on this reserve. Furthermore, any club that charged either a higher or comparable price on the gate, had far cheaper season ticket offers than Town.

Our season tickets have been seriously over-inflated in price, and don’t offer good value for the investment, especially for those under 18. If you don’t reward loyalty you can’t expect to receive it in return, and whilst it’s not for me to speculate as to how this has happened, it’s a potentially costly miscalculation by a club seeking to grow the fanbase.

If you’ve hooked a supporter in with a reasonably priced season ticket, they’re there supporting you through thick and thin, buying merchandise and food, and you have their money.

We’re now reliant on the team performing well enough on the pitch in the middle of a looming cost of living crisis to attract enough floating spectators through the gates on an ad-hoc basis.

If energy and food prices continue to fly through the roof whilst the Government twiddles its thumbs, many regulars will have no option but to pick and choose when they can afford to attend, if at all. If performances dip or an unfashionable club is in town, many floating fans, not tied to the club by their season ticket, will also choose to spend their limited money elsewhere.

I write this not in a spirit of criticism, it pains me to have to do so, but solely with the club’s best interests at heart. Hopefully Town can seek to do something towards correcting the imbalance, as the future of the club depends on it.’