Despite the result, I think most people connected to the club were pleased with the performance versus Oldham.

There were times in the game when we had all four youngsters who had come through the academy and up to seven amateurs on the pitch and, apart from the opening salvo, we more than held our own. I know that Paul Crarey will be the happier coach of him and Matt Diskin.

Off the field, we were also pleased with the day. To attract almost a thousand to a friendly on a bitterly cold day with the heavens opening in the hour before kick-off gives us confidence that we have retained our core support.

The challenge for the board is to really capture the imagination of the Barrow public and to push the crowd beyond last season’s average and really start to challenge crowds of 2,000-plus, just as Barrow AFC have done.

We live streamed the game on our website and I must thank Jack Fawcett, Keith Wearing, Dan Payne and Grahame Dale for a superb production.

We plan to livestream as many games as possible this season, as we are no longer bound by the Sky TV agreement. We have received permission from the RFL, as long as we don’t clash with a Sky Sports game or the main Ourleague game of the day.

Some will say that if we put all our games on free-to-air TV channels then people won’t bother coming to the game. We don’t subscribe to that view. Getting awareness of our product and maybe encouraging some of our floating fans to enjoy the product may well get them to attend matches.

There is also the possibility to get some sponsorship for our products and getting greater game awareness is near the top of the RFL’s priorities. We will be rewarded with extra funding if we can prove through website hits that we have a greater following than some of our rival clubs.

We also introduced our new ticketing system and it seemed to go with very few hitches. There weren’t any queues out of the ordinary but we were conscious that more fans were using the cash gates.

We don’t think our fans should fear the change. It really was easy to either pre-purchase online or turn up at the ticket window. Hopefully, more of our fans will do the former.

Before our fixture against North Wales on Sunday, we have our sponsors’ night at Abbey House on Friday at 7:30pm.

This is an opportunity to sponsor the club and we have packages that will suit almost every budget.

With the massive cut in RFL funding, we need our sponsors more than ever and it was great that we are picking up some new faces in that department, like Holiday Inn Express, who sponsored our game last Sunday.

They have built a fantastic hotel in Barrow and we hope we can help raise brand awareness through our association. All our fans and sponsors are welcome to attend.