BARROW ON THE UP

Of Paul Casson can soar again under the ownership JEFF WELCH believes the Bluebirds

Paul Casson revives the Bluebirds

QUESTION.What has the longest cul-desac in England and Dallas, Texas got in common? The Cumbrian town of Barrow-in-Furness was given the cul-de-sac title by the comedian, Mike Harding, better known as the Rochdale Cowboy. Barrovians haven’t forgiven him, neither have they forgiven the Football League for voting their beloved side out of Division Four in June 1972.

In the days of re-election, the great and the good would meet at the Cafe Royal in London and decide the fate of the sides that had finished in the bottom four of the Fourth Division (or League Two as we now call it).

Barrow finished third from bottom in 1971/72 so were, to put it mildly, shocked to be shown the door into what was then the footballing abyss.

I suppose you can’t blame the other league clubs for voting how they did. In the 1970s, the motorway system was even worse than it is now, and few fancied making the long trek up north to the then-Lancashire town (that’s another bone of contention with Barrovians, those bloody boundary changes of 1974) when life could be made so much easier travelling to Hereford, the new darlings of the media, thanks to that FA Cup replay victory over Newcastle captured by a young John Motson and his team.

So what you may ask has Barrow and Dallas got in common ? The answer is a man called Paul Casson. A Barrovian-made-good who’s not forgotten his roots and is determined to put the club he supported as a schoolboy during its heyday in the late 1960s back on the footballing map.

Casson has lived the American dream. Brought up in Barrow, educated at the local grammar school, years later he found himself in the United States owning a telecommunications business that had turned him into a multi-millionaire.

When his father Walter, who still lived in Barrow, died, he was determined to do something that would have made his dad proud, and last year he told the good folk of Barrow that within five years he wanted to take their club back into the promised land of the Football League.

It all seemed too good to be true but so far, so good. Casson looks all set to become as famous as Barrow’s other footballing sons, England internationals Emlyn Hughes and Gary Stevens.

Barrow, as you’d expect, recruited extensively over the summer but it was the off-thefield events that made most of the headlines.

The floodlights at Barrow’s Holker Street ground (or Furness Building Society Stadium as it’s now known) had seen better days.

Their official switch-on took place in a match in 1963 against the then-Scottish First Division outfit Dunfermline Athletic.

The Scots were managed at the time by a certain Jock Stein, and as he went on to light up Celtic Park with the Lisbon Lions, the four huge pylons situated at each corner of the ground, which held the lights, fell into a state of disrepair.

One floodlight structure was even replaced with a look-a-like mobile phone mast. Their condition was so bad that there was talk that all the pylons would have to be taken down and replaced by smaller modern masts but Casson was having none of it.

He realised the floodlights were an iconic piece of the Barrow landscape as well known as the cranes that had once dominated the town’s skyline during its shipbuilding heyday.