After ending their home campaign in style against Hartlepool United on Monday, manager Ian Evatt is hoping Barrow AFC can reproduce that kind of form when they return to National League action at Holker Street in August.

A bumper crowd of 3,007 witnessed the Bluebirds produce arguably their best performance of the season against Pools, with the 1-0 scoreline not representative of their dominance.

However, the fact they’ve ended with a statistic of nine home wins from their 23 league fixtures on their own patch gives an indication of why a push for the play-offs didn’t materialise.

Evatt said: “I think if our home form would have been better, we would have been right up there this season.

“We kind of know where we’ve gone wrong, we’ve learned as a group what we need to do to become successful.

“So there are lessons learned and if we can create an atmosphere like there was on Monday, then it’s going to be difficult for any opponent to come here because that was fantastic.”

AFC saw out the result against Hartlepool impressively, with no repeat of the sort of late jitters that have cost them at times over the course of the season, with the back four hardly giving their opponents a chance.

Evatt said: “That’s also pleasing because we’ve shown that we can keep things tight and solid at the back and we can see games out properly.

“I’ve been there, I’ve played as a centre-half and as a defender, and when your forwards are missing chance after chance, sometimes you can be nervy, but I thought our boys were brilliant today.

“We’re only just getting started – I keep saying that we’ve got a lot of hard work over the summer, but we’ll do it and hopefully we’ll come back bigger and stronger next season.”