“The club did look seriously at training in Barrow,” says captain Niall Canavan. “But the practicality of it and the travel times for everyone on a daily basis, it just didn’t work. Speaking to some of the boys up there, they say the road floods at times in the winter.
“You can end up stuck one side of it. So, yes, we’d maybe get in for training but then you can’t get home to pick your kids up. Or you don’t get home at all. This works.”
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Meet Barrow AFC, the League Two club who train almost 100 miles from their hometown in Cumbria. Salford is the team’s weekday base after a two-year agreement was struck during the summer with De La Salle Sports & Social Club to rent their facilities.
For a club whose roots are planted deeply in its community on the Furness Peninsula, such a set-up is far from ideal. But it is practical with Barrow’s isolated location — Morecambe Bay, the Duddon Estuary and the Irish Sea lap at the town’s border — leading many a local to joke over the years about living at the end of the longest cul-de-sac in the country.
In the highly competitive lower-league recruitment market, Barrow just doesn’t cut it as a location. Especially at a time when most player contracts in the fourth tier stretch no further than a year or two at the most, meaning there isn’t the security to up sticks and move the entire family hundreds of miles.
Better to train within a commutable distance and only travel to the west coast for home matches, where the players stay overnight after reporting to a local hotel no later than 7pm on a Friday.
This way, Leeds-based Canavan, a January signing and recently awarded a new contract to 2024, and his team-mates are able to satisfy manager Pete Wild’s stipulation that his squad lives within an hour of the training ground.
“Most of the lads are based Manchester way,” adds the 31-year-old centre-half. “A few come from the Chester side, two or three of the southern lads live in a club house (in Manchester) and then there are the five of us who drive in from what the gaffer calls the ‘dark side’. We’re from Yorkshire.”
By setting up base during the week in Salford, Barrow give themselves a fighting chance in a crowded recruitment market that includes a trio of their League Two peers from Greater Manchester in Rochdale, Stockport County and Salford City. Tranmere Rovers and Crewe Alexandra aren’t far away, either.
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Accrington Stanley, Bolton Wanderers, Fleetwood Town and Morecambe — the latter two both around 15 miles from Barrow as the crow flies but 75 and 50 miles respectively by road — can also be found in the division above, while Wild’s hometown club Oldham Athletic dropped into the National League last May.
“The set-up works well,” says former FC Halifax Town manager Wild, who, since taking charge in May, has overseen 13 signings and 15 departures. “But we are also aware how important a role we play in the community.
“On a Friday before every home game, we send the players into the schools. The town is right behind us so when we are in Barrow, we make sure people see us.
“That works two-fold, as one of the players realised last week. He was blown away at one school by how the kids knew all the players’ names. Not just a couple. Every single one. That just doesn’t happen at every football club.”
Iain Wood, an agent with 15 years’ experience in the game and by now running his own company, was holidaying in Egypt last April when an email arrived from Barrow to turn his working life upside down.
As part of the search for someone to lead operations at a club that had finished 21st and 22nd in their first two seasons since returning to the EFL, co-owners Tony Shearer and Paul Hornby wanted a chat.
His interest was piqued sufficiently to break into the family trip to take the Zoom call. Six months on, he’s barely had time to draw breath. “There’s been a few bumps in the road but we’ve achieved a lot,” says Barrow’s sporting director.
Wood’s first big call was to let go of manager Phil Brown, who had made public his desire to start training back in Barrow from this season. “There were just disparities between Phil and what I thought and what the owners thought,” he explains.
Then came the ultimately successful pursuit of Wild, who had done a remarkable job to take unfancied Halifax to the National League play-offs in two of the past three seasons, and an overhaul of the squad.
As this was going on, Wood was literally getting his hands dirty bringing the Salford base he’d found in late May up to speed to end a nomadic existence that saw Barrow’s players train at no less than 11 different locations last season.
“I remember pulling up here for the first time,” he says when giving The Athletic an impromptu tour of the De La Salle facilities. “The weather wasn’t great and the place looked a bit tired, with the hedges overgrown and stuff like that.
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“But I saw the potential straight away. It just needed a lick of paint, some nice furniture and a few Barrow signs to badge the place as ours.”
The summer paint job was largely done by Wood, his partner Carly and Ryan Sutherland, who goes by the official title of kit manager at Barrow but, in reality, mucks in to do a multitude of jobs. The trio also scrubbed the walls and floor of the temporary building that now doubles as Wild’s office during the week.
All this endeavour means the players finally have a base befitting an EFL club. There are two changing rooms for the squad, one for the staff and another that has been converted into the physio’s room.
All training kit is also now washed on site, as opposed to last season when the players had to take their muddy shirts and shorts home. The club has also taken out gym membership for the entire squad to do any necessary work, such as weights, at a nearby facility.
“The big thing I wanted was some stability for the players,” says Wood about a set-up that includes provision for the squad to train on an artificial pitch at the nearby Salford Sports Village should the weather take a turn for the worse this winter.
“That stretches to the manager with the one thing I guaranteed Pete when offering him the job being longevity. This is not a one-or-two-season thing.”
Barrow’s commitment has already been illustrated by Wild and assistant Adam Temple being handed new long-term contracts just six weeks into the season.
A scintillating start that included 3-2 victories over Stockport County and Bradford City, the bookmakers’ two overwhelming favourites to go up before a ball had been kicked, lay behind a move that took even Wild by surprise.
Beating Doncaster Rovers 2-0 in a match watched by Marcus Rashford, there to support Barrow’s former Manchester United junior Tyrell Warren, further fueled the feelgood factor swirling round Holker Street, where attendances are up 80 per cent on the 2019-20 National League title-winning campaign that saw Ian Evatt’s side dubbed ‘Barrowcelona’ thanks to their expansive style of football.
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Four league defeats on the bounce have since seen Barrow, who operate on a mid-table budget, slip to 11th. Patience is clearly going to be needed to realise the vision laid out by Wood and Wild, though progression in the EFL Trophy at the expense of neighbours Carlisle United on Tuesday night brought a welcome fillip despite one home fan halting play for 18 minutes by throwing a firework at visiting goalkeeper Michael Kelly.
“We have been victims of our own success,” says Wild, who apologised to Carlisle counterpart Paul Simpson immediately after the firework incident. “If we’d won a couple, lost a couple and still been on 21 points then everyone is happy.
“But we came out of the blocks. Beating Carlisle, though, should give the players heart.”
Judging by our visit to Salford, training is intense. As are the regular video sessions led by Lewis Dunwoody, the club’s head of analysis and data, for players and staff.
But there is still an element of fun to be had, including a recent darts competition that descended into the players seeing how far away they could stand from the board and still hit it.
“That lasted two days,” explains captain Canavan with a roll of the eyes when asked who won. “Then no darts left. No winners in that situation.”
Wild encourages the banter at a club that returned to the Football League in 2020 after 48 years away, the manager even bestowing the nickname ‘Casper’ — the teenage lead character in the iconic British film Kes — on Barnsley native Harrison Neal soon after his arrival on loan from Sheffield United.
Next up for sporting director Wood is establishing an academy in time for next season. A useful knock-on effect for Wild will be Barrow at last being able to field seven substitutes on a matchday rather than the six currently permitted under EFL rules for clubs with no recognised youth set-up.
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The plan is to launch just an Under-18s side initially with a squad of 18 players, meaning Category 4 status. An advert for an academy manager will run until the end of this month but already there have been 40-plus applicants.
“The academy will be set up in Barrow,” adds Wood. “Not completely confirmed yet but there is one site I am leaning towards. If I am able to sort that site out, it makes the process easier in terms of where we see ourselves in a few years’ time.”
Does this mean the first team may soon end their weekday exile of recent years and decamp back to Cumbria?
“The conversation about going back to Barrow happened the moment I walked through the door,” replies Wood. “But it was quashed very quickly. It didn’t feel like the right time or the right environment.
“To underline how important where we are based is at the moment, my first conversation with every agent is, ‘You do realise we train in Manchester?’. Those are literally my opening words.
“But I am also aware that the football club does need to be in Barrow at some stage.”
Just when the landscape might be right for a possible return to training on the Furness Peninsula remains to be seen. “The only way this moves forward to Barrow being in Barrow is the club has gone in an upwards direction,” adds Wood.
“The further you go up the leagues, contracts are longer and the financials help make it work. While we are in this league, there are lots of options elsewhere for players.
“We need to show people we are improving as a club. Our problem when sitting down with players and their agents last summer was we’d just finished third bottom of the Football League. Getting their minds away from that was difficult.
“I’ve already had conversations with agents who have since admitted, ‘We made the wrong choice’. That doesn’t change the fact those players went elsewhere. But it suggests perceptions are changing.
“Next summer, I hope the conversations won’t necessarily be just about us training in Manchester or what we do on home matchdays. More about the progress we are making as a club.”
(Top photo: Mike Morese/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)