Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt has revealed several of his players were showing possible symptoms for coronavirus last Saturday morning, with them now self-isolating.

With Barnet’s entire first-team squad doing the same after four members of the Bees’ staff displayed symptoms, the decision to postpone Tuesday night’s fixture at The Hive was taken between the two clubs late on Saturday night.

The National League made the decision to continue their season in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic last Friday, but the fact that AFC have since had to call off two matches has cast serious doubt on their wisdom.

As things stand, Evatt’s side are next due back in action against Stockport County on March 28, but given the worsening situation across the country, even that is looking unlikely to go ahead.

Evatt said: “We’ve got at least three with symptoms, so why take the risk?

“Why would we put ourselves in that position? There might be more cases to come out in our squad in the next day or so and the advice is that if you’ve been in contact with someone who’s shown symptoms then you’ve got to self-isolate.

“There was no way we could envisage that game going ahead.”

The news of the match against Barnet being off came just a day after Wrexham asked for their match against the Bluebirds at Holker Street to also be postponed due to one of their players being in self-isolation.

While it’s frustrating for Evatt to have this unprecedented level of disruption with his team potentially nine games away from promotion to the Football League, the 38-year-old knows he had to make his players and staff’s wellbeing the priority.

Evatt said: “On Saturday, there were two or three of our players who woke up with symptoms that could potentially be coronavirus.

“We don’t know because they’ve stopped the testing now, so we have to self-isolate. There was no way we could play on Tuesday knowing our players have been in contact with others in our squad.

“We don’t know who’s going to come down with symptoms - there’s already two or three that are showing symptoms, with coughs, a bit of fever etc, so I just don’t know when we’re going to play again or what’s going to happen.”