Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt was happy to see his team round off their campaign with a 2-0 victory at Gateshead, even though he was less pleased with the way their performance dipped in the second half.

The talk from the Bluebirds this week was that they wouldn’t be playing like a side already thinking about their holidays and in the first half at the International Stadium, they were as good as their word.

They were two goals up with just 22 minutes played thanks to two excellent goals by midfielder John Rooney, who made it into double figures for the season, and it looked as though they’d sign off with a resounding scoreline.

However, they couldn’t maintain the same level of performance in the second half against a limited Gateshead side, who weren’t able to take advantage of the occasional moment of sloppiness.

Evatt said: “I think in the first half we were excellent, we really took on what we did against Hartlepool and probably could have been three or four up at half-time – should have been three or four up at half-time.

“Then in the second half, it was a case of the flip-flops were on, the game’s won, we’ll just go into our comfort zone and we have to be better than that.

“We have to improve - moving forwards, that’s not acceptable but we won the game pretty comfortably at the end.

“It was an excellent result to finish a decent season. I say ‘decent’ because I think can be better.

“You’ll know well enough by now that where we’ve finished isn’t acceptable for me – we need to be in and around the play-off positions at least, and hopefully next season we can do that.

“It’s another away win, another away clean sheet and it’s nice to finish the season on 64 points and in the top half.”