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The Nervous Wait
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Bees stumble again as the nerves get the better of us.
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By:
Eric Hitchmo
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19/04/2025
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This article has been viewed 285 times.
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As Barnet FC seemingly stand on the precipice of non-league and club history, I am at pains to remind readers and myself that I have had to watch it all unfold from afar. When I uprooted to Ireland in February 2021, it was at a time where we were all forced to watch week by week on ropey streams as our on-pitch fortunes went from bad to worse to horrific. It seems scarcely believable that four years later our fortunes have turned to this extent, and here I am engaged in the club to a level that I haven’t been for years, albeit from a distance.
In truth, my absenteeism had begun well in advance of the pandemic, disillusioned as I was with the direction of the club at The Hive. I don’t need to go over this again as I have documented it several times, but I am fully aware that my fair-weather approach won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, particularly to those who have stuck through every low point of the last decade. Through my own choices, I turned my back on the days out with the boys, the sing songs, the last minute winners and the bundles. Perhaps if I knew what I do now, maybe I’d have been a little less drastic.
It’s amazing though how much of a grip a football team can have on you. Podcasting and reminiscing about the good old days in 2020 and 2021 kept the dying flames alive even though the football at the time was atrocious. Attending occasional games again as trips home allowed from the latter end of 2022-2023 well and truly got the fire going again. Had I not moved to Ireland I’ve no doubt I would have been back there with my season ticket, my hat and my scarf. But NLTV and maintaining a stats website and associated social media accounts will have to do.
It’s not only our on-field fortunes that have turned. Being involved in the Bring Barnet Back campaign, the very idea that the club is intending to move back to Barnet fills me with joy and to some extent, relief. The club has a direction and a purpose, things which in my view it had lost since we left Underhill in 2013, and was the driving reason behind why I abstained. More fool me, perhaps. As my esteemed colleague has said, this is an amazing time to be a Barnet fan and doesn’t happen all that often. Savour it.
Savour it because this a season that is almost beyond anything we have ever experienced. A culmination of nearly four years of building from the ground up under Dean Brennan’s leadership. Of course we all go along because we like football but we also go along because of the people, the days out and the camaraderie of following a small club like ours. For me, the 2004-2005 league winning season was an untouchable, coming-of-age life-defining experience for those reasons. We still surely believe that 2024-2025 will be looked back on similarly by young and old alike for the near constant jubilation it has brought to us all.
The team we have this season is statistically as good or better than almost any team that has worn the famous black and amber. Numerous club records have already fallen, and several more are still at threat of a team that has defeated more or less all in its path. That didn’t always look like it might be the case this season however after a hit-and-miss start and has wavered of late, but a 25-game unbeaten run isn’t done by fluke.
Early on, it appeared we may have been at risk of repeating the mistakes that have cost us over the last few years. Namely, our frail defensive record and a tendency to wilt under pressure in big games. That was demonstrated clearly in the 3-1 defeat at title rivals York where we were good value for a draw or better until two sucker punches in the second half knocked the wind out of our sails. Not even the biggest optimist could have predicted we wouldn’t lose again in the league until April when we came unstuck at Braintree to a man we know very well, John Akinde. Not only that but we shored up our defensive line to the point that several clean sheet records that have stood for decades have been broken. With the odd creak here and there, but we’ve been mostly ridiculous in 2025.
Dean Brennan has not been afraid to make big calls in his tenure, not all of them popular, but the ones he has made this year have been the difference and squared the circle, as it were. Firstly, the goalkeeper situation. Having brought in Nick Hayes in place of the popular Laurie Walker in the summer, he made the call in January to bring in a new keeper in Owen Evans on loan. Hayes was unspectacular for us and perhaps didn’t have the exact attributes required to fit in with what Brennan wanted. And he was offloaded to Southend. Decisive and ruthless. The gamble paid off, and while it can’t be said that Evans is the sole reason we have been so tight at the back, he’s certainly a big part of it with his ability to snuff out danger early and his excellent distribution. He’s been a terrific addition to the team and surely we’ll be looking to make it permanent.
The second big call was the sale of Nicke Kabamba, an excellent servant of the club in the past two and a half years. General consensus was that despite him maintaining a fine scoring record this season he perhaps wasn’t quite hitting the heights of what he had done before. Brennan had clearly decided he wanted something different so the proceeds of the sale to Bromley were used to purchase Lee Ndlovu from Boreham Wood. Ndlovu certainly offers that something different, and his key attributes have been his strength and hold up play. It’s a subtle change, but it means we now have an increased ability to go direct when we need to, and that has been a real differentiator in the second half of the season. To be clear, we bloody love Nicke Kabamba and wish him nothing but success.
One criticism I have had in Brennan’s time is that we have generally had one way of playing regardless of the situation or the opposition. When it worked it was great, but when it was found out, it exposed our weaknesses in full (see Solihull in the playoffs, amongst others). However, these subtle changes aided by the additions of Evans and Ndlovu have given us the ability to adapt when the time arises. That alongside the building of a brilliant squad with players who are able to take on different roles when needed. Take for example the away games at Rochdale, Oldham and Woking. All three games were played on pitches which you could consider poor. Our usual possession-based pass and move game may not have stood the test of those pitches, so we took a more direct approach, utilising Evans’ distribution and Ndlovu’s hold up play and it paid dividends big time. We’ve been quite happy to mix it up and win ugly when the need arises.
Let’s not forget that despite being fairly experienced that Dean Brennan is still young and learning the trade. What he has done to this football club is exceptional, all on a pretty tight budget by all accounts. He has made mistakes of course, but he has learned from them, moved on and made the required changes. His recruitment in general has been outstanding, and he has made bold and brave calls when it comes to improving the squad and setting the bar high. He deserves huge credit for what he has done and is ultimately responsible for fielding perhaps the greatest team this club has ever seen.
Much of the conversation between friends has been trying to pinpoint the day that we win the league so we can all go for a big day out and my full circle bandwagon can complete its final turn. However, if there’s one thing I know about Barnet it’s that we never make it easy for ourselves and even this team isn’t immune to “Barnet-ing it”. We had to lose at some point at course with the aforementioned Braintree defeat, but that was followed up by a disappointing draw at home to Wealdstone. Meanwhile York, who ruled themselves out of the running in March, have quietly gone about their business and have cut the gap to a pretty uncomfortable level as they string together win after win at the business end.
I took the gamble on Good Friday being the day, but results meant that it couldn’t be the day regardless of what happened. Nonetheless we arranged to meet up in the Tavern for the early game of Gateshead v York quietly optimistic that the home side had put their bad form behind them and that it was enough of a tricky test that a win was by no means guaranteed for York. For half an hour or so that looked the case, but York nicked a scrappy equaliser and stormed back in the second half to take a convincing 3-1 win. Suddenly our lead was three points with a game in hand. Too close for comfort.
There was still plenty of optimism however that we could beat an Eastleigh team who are in a rough patch of form and are more or less on the beach. The real question being whether could we handle the pressure. We made our way over to The Hive in good time for kick off anticipating a big crowd and queues. In truth the queues to get in weren’t too bad but that was around half an hour before kick off.
I stopped for a brief moment as I stepped through the turnstiles at The Hive for the first time in nearly seven years. Yes you read that right. When we were relegated in 2018 I said I’d never set foot in the place again, such was my anger at how we were being run and our direction of travel. As I said before, that would’ve been different had I not moved to Ireland, but there we are. I suppose we are all susceptible to a bold statement and reneging on it very quickly when it suits us. Or maybe it’s just me.
The queue for the bar felt like it started in 2018, the well documented troubles with service playing out in full as the queues snaked around the concourse. I’m not sure there’s any point in moaning about it as it’s all fallen on deaf ears. However, credit where it’s due, the burger I had later on was superb even if it was nine English pounds.
The game itself then. Hmmm. It followed the pattern of more or less every home game I’ve seen this season with very little exception. Away team sits in, we pass it around, we try and break them down, eventually we win. Or at least that’s how the vast majority have ended. This one though was determined to go a different way.
Eastleigh, despite their poor form and lack of threat to the playoffs/relegation, seemed to revel in their role of party poopers. From minute one they time wasted, shit housed and tried to frustrate us by sticking ten men behind the ball. It worked. The referee did very little to stop it and was perfectly happy to let it all go.
However, it wasn’t the referee who played a loose pass that caught Owen Evans out not long before half time that saw ex-Barnet man Paul McCallum finish and give the visitors an unlikely lead and make our task even trickier. We were masters of our own demise for that one. Even more worrying was the fact that we had created little at this point so the task of finding one goal let alone two looked a bit of an ask. We were probing without much breakthrough, missing that cutting edge in the final third, and making it too easy for them to defend. How refreshing then that the crucial equaliser was to come on the stroke of half time from a more direct source. Anthony Hartigan delivered a trademark pinpoint free kick onto the head of Danny Collinge who could not miss from inside the six yard box.
This gave us a much needed optimism boost going into the second half. The general consensus was that at half time we’d get a boot and we’d come out firing on all cylinders to romp home to victory. That’s the thing about general consensuses (sp?), they’re almost always a load of bollocks. The second half was the first half on steroids. Eastleigh were very successfully winding us up at every opportunity, stopping us from getting anything into the box and wasting as much time as possible with no interest in winning the game. Fair enough.
We tried to mix it up through personnel changes, Ndlovu, Chapman and Telford coming on to try and break their defence down but in truth it never looked like happening. Chapman was the most likely source after Kanu was withdrawn and looked dangerous at times, but the Eastleigh defence were able to repel everything we threw at them before we even got a shot away. I don’t recall the keeper making many saves and the crowd began to get more and more frustrated as time went on and our approach didn’t change. This was in direct contradiction to the point I made before about switching it up and winning ugly. We didn’t switch it up, we tried the same thing over and over again when it was clear it wasn’t working. Very frustrating.
Time ticked closer to the 90 and we were huffing and puffing, but we would find no way through. Though disappointed, the atmosphere seemed generally positive around the place during and after, despite some scarcely believable boos from some. The Amber Battalion did their best to keep the atmosphere going behind us and to be fair did a pretty good job of it while the rest of us were too tense to join in. That was it, 1-1. Our lead at the top cut to just four points and we’re left wondering whether we are going to commit one of the most almighty fuck ups in recorded history.
After the game, the BFCSA were having their end of year awards. Everyone would perhaps have hoped that they’d be held in a more celebratory atmosphere but alas we are being made to wait nervously for the next game to try and finish the job. Nonetheless the atmosphere was still very positive as the awards were read out for London Bees as well as the first team. Dean Brennan addressed the decent number of people who stayed to watch and assured us they were still working hard day and night to get over the line. A word too for the winner of the Lester Finch award, Iain Botterill, who has been a driving force behind the Bring Barnet Back campaign. His work has been nothing short of outstanding and it is a fully deserved award for him. Legend.
The feeling to me is that the team is tired and that they are nervous. We have to dig deep to find that last bit of energy to drag us over the line. That’s all it is at this stage, fatigue. We know they have the ability and the quality, that is not in question. It’s the mental game now, blocking out all exterior noise, pushing through the tiredness and getting the job done.
The equation on paper is simple. Win two of the last three games and win the league. It doesn’t matter how we do it, that’s all we need. The fixtures on paper are favourable. Away to Sutton who have nothing to play for. Home to an Aldershot team who have an FA Trophy final at Wembley to think about. Away to Fylde who are already relegated. We have to go on the assumption that York will win all of their remaining games. Do our bit and it doesn’t matter.
For me, I made my Eastleigh bed and I have laid in it. I won’t be back for the remaining fixtures as I value my family! In any case, I am a curse. I have seen three games in person this season, none of them have been wins. I’ll be nervously watching on NLTV hoping that we can get it over the line. We are all nervous and desperate but we need to stay positive starting with a sell out away end at Sutton on Monday. Be noisy, be boisterous, push them on. Enjoy it.
We would have taken this position at the start of the season, we have to believe. This team has proven itself to be a brilliant team, they just have one piece of the puzzle to find to prove themselves to be great. The statistics and numbers show it, but they won’t mean a thing if we don’t get it over the line. Though I may be wavering like the rest of us, I still believe we have what it takes. Starting Monday.
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