Last updated at 15:02, Wednesday, 22 July 2009

PRE-SEASON FRIENDLY

Penrith

3

Barrow AFC

4

TRIALLIST striker Darren Green scored on his Barrow AFC debut as the Bluebirds won a seven-goal pre-season thriller at lower-league Penrith last night.

With last season’s top scorer Jason Walker on trial at Championship side Doncaster Rovers, Barrow blooded a new front man in the shape of Green, a 20-year-old former England Colleges Under-19s player who was recently released by Stockport County.

The Bluebirds had also wanted to feature a striker whom they are hopeful of eventually getting on-loan. However, injuries at the unnamed player’s parent club mean he is not available to Barrow at present.

The visitors made a bright start and took the lead on nine minutes when Green split the Penrith defence with a lovely ball inside the right full-back, which Carlos Logan ran on to and slotted between keeper James Holland’s legs.

Andy Bond had a rasping 25-yard shot beaten out by Holland before Sean Newton opened his goalscoring account for the Bluebirds.

The left-back let fly from 30 yards with a powerful low drive that sped past the dive of Holland and arrowed into the bottom corner.

Logan – linking well on the left flank with Newton – was terrorising Penrith right-back Grant Davidson. On 19 minutes the winger skinned his marker once again and this time picked out a stretching John Murphy, who just put his effort wide at the far post.

The hosts – who play their football in Northern League Division One – were allowed a way back into the game on 22 minutes when Paul Jones gave away a foul in a dangerous position.

Stephen Ainsworth cracked the resulting 20-yard free-kick past the five-man AFC wall and into the bottom corner.

More sloppy defending four minutes later almost gifted Penrith an equaliser. Fortunately for Barrow, winger Dean Douglas was off target with his shot.

The Bluebirds re-established their two-goal advantage on 32 minutes when Logan beat his man again and lifted the ball to the back stick for right winger Paul Rutherford to head home his first goal for the club.

Six minutes later Penrith were awarded a penalty when Simon Spender was adjudged to have brought down Douglas. Deasy saved Steve Archibald’s penalty, but the Penrith man gobbled up the rebound to make it 3-2 at the interval.

The hosts drew level 10 minutes after the re-start when centre-half Wayne Robertson rose powerfully at the near post to head home a corner.

Barrow responded straight away. Rutherford raced clear down the right wing and, after feigning to shoot, cleverly rolled the ball back to the waiting Green, whose tame 10-yard effort squirmed its way past Holland and over the line.

Both sides made substitutions – Barrow giving a chance to young Salford-based defender Darren Thomas – and with those the flow of the game was lost.

Penrith went on to enjoy the better of the remaining half-hour, but rarely troubled Deasy’s goal.

Barrow had two further efforts of note, a Jack Brierley header that went well wide and a Bond shot that did the same.

Barrow joint-manager Dave Bayliss said: “We trained hard yesterday so it was a really good workout tonight.

“We’ve got 90 minutes into the likes of Jonah, Dugdale, Bondy and Boydy, so that’s a big plus, and everyone has come through it without any injuries.”

He added: “The trial game Jason (Walker) was supposed to play for Doncaster today was cancelled because of the weather, but he trained with them and will be there for the rest of the week.

“The (on-loan striker) kid we thought we’d have tonight, his club have had an injury to another of their strikers and so the lad is staying there for the time being at least.

“We’ve also made an offer to another striker, who is currently on trial at another Conference Premier club and we’re waiting for him to get back to us.”

First published at 13:09, Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk