BARROW AFC manager Pete Wild goes into tomorrow’s game against Mansfield Town giving his all to try to help get his team over the line.

But the Bluebirds boss is also trying to manage the most difficult of balancing acts.

While Wild, his players and his staff are pushing with everything they have to try and make the play-off dream a reality, the gaffer must also look at the wider picture.

It’s not lost on Wild just how big tomorrow’s League Two clash with The Stags is for those of a blue and white persuasion.

How could it be?

But a man who so often tells us that it is vital to take things one game at a time must also look at the longer game.

And that is why while Wild knows that 90+ minutes at Holker Street tomorrow will determine whether Barrow make the play-offs or not, he can’t let it define what has been a season of many highs, or the longer journey since his arrival in Cumbria.

Speaking to The Mail ahead of the game, he said: “It’s a big game. It’s a big game for our season, and in the grand scheme of where the club has come from it’s a massive game for the football club.

“But again, if we scale it back down a little bit, it shows the how far the club has come in the last two years.

“We are going into the last game of the season, and if we win, we get in the play-offs. Two years ago, when we walked through the door, they weren’t talking anything about play offs.

“So as much as I think the game is a really big one, I think tomorrow should also be a real celebration of how far the football club has come in the last two years.”

“People will have their own expectations of what they want from the situation. I am not daft, and I know everyone will have their own take on it.

“But listen we all want to get into the play-offs, we want to get personally, collectively as a squad and for the football club and the supporters.

“It would do us all a favour in terms of our careers, so it is not as though we are trying to mess this up on purpose if that makes sense.”

But while Wild craves victory as much as anyone he has to take a more pragmatic look at things.

He added: “What we have got to do is make sure there is sensible expectations that accompany what’s going off at the moment, and that’s what I am trying to do.

“I don’t want to put added pressure on to a situation that should be a celebration.”

“The right result would give something tangible at the end of what has been an exciting two years for the football club.

“But what I am trying to say is that if we get in the play-off it is not a final destination, it’s just another point in time where we have moved the club forward.

“It is really important that we don’t see that this result tomorrow is do or die for the football club. It’s just part of the process of moving the club forward.”