CITY players must have heard rumours about new manager Alan Tinsley's plans to re-build his squad - they played their hearts out in this game.

The team were desperately unlucky to get no rewards out of this game that they clearly dominated through and through.

Unfortunately, City couldn't take advantage of their domination and so went down to their seventh defeat in a row.

City looked like taking the lead in the 5th minute when Dave Lancaster stormed through and snatched the ball off a defender leaving him one on one with the 'keeper. Lancaster chose to square the ball to Mark Dobie who took too long on the ball and allowed Dave Higgins to clear the ball to safety to the pleasure of the Barrow fans who were giving a bad reception to the ex-bluebird.

Barrow started to get some sort of grip on the game but lacked the sort of touch that was going to beat Mark Thornley who was in excellent form again.

But the harsh weather which had made the yellow of Lancaster black with mud also created fierce winds which blew towards Lancaster's goal and Barrow took full advantage of this and left Thornley helpless on the 39th minute.

Paul Robertson's corner was a superb shot which almost caught Thornley out. All Thornley could do was parry the ball but Gary Bauress in the box. He struck the ball onto the post and the his second was superbly turned around by Thornley.

Second half efforts from Dean Martin and Gary Worthington came close but good goalkeeping from Steve Farrelly made sure they were no threat.

Alan Tinsley said: "We were unlucky not to get anything from the game. A lot of the Barrow players and directors admitted after the match that we deserved at least a draw, if not a win.

"At the moment we are struggling at the bottom of the table with a bad run of games but if we can play like this every time, I honestly think we've got nothing to worry about."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.