Barrow AFC manager Ian Evatt has called on the National League to look into ways of preventing a repeat of the chaos that led to his side’s game against Dover Athletic being postponed last Saturday.

On what was Non-League Day, a fatality on the railway lines near Milton Keynes ended up wreaking havoc on the fixture schedule in what is the highest division below the Football League.

Three games were called off in total as a result of the disruption that followed, with AFC Fylde v Sutton United and Stockport County v Dagenham & Redbridge also having to be called off.

Dover’s decision to travel from London Euston at 9:30am on the morning of the game, as well as the two clubs from the capital doing likewise, ended up playing a large factor in the postponements, even if circumstances were out of their control.

However, AFC cover themselves against eventualities such as that by travelling down the day before the game for their longer away journeys.

Evatt said: “We at Barrow haven’t got the finances that most of the other National League teams have got, but we still find a way to travel the night before to stop this sort of thing happening.

“I emphasise that there’s been a tragedy and someone has lost their life, but that can happen, unfortunately, in this world we live in, so it’s running the gauntlet by leaving that late.

“It’s affected this football club in a huge way, so the league has to look at it and it has to make provisions that this cannot happen again because it’s not just our game, three games have been called off.

“It all could have been avoided. We are now in a professional league, we’ve got professional players, we pay a lot of money out in this league now and we have to back that up by being professional off the pitch.

“That means if teams have to travel the day before a game, they do it - instead of spending £2 million on your squad, spend a bit of money for a hotel on the Friday night.”

There were on-field and off-field reasons for Evatt’s annoyance at the game getting called off at such short notice.

Not only did it prevent the Bluebirds from attempting to equal a 114-year-old club record by winning an eighth league game in a row, it also stopped them from playing in front of an expected crowd of over 3,000, which would have swelled the club’s coffers.

“There are implications for my team because we are on a fantastic run, playing some great football and we could have broke a 100-odd-year-old record today, which is bitterly disappointing when it all should have been avoided,” Evatt said.