BARRY BIDS TO KEEP ON SAVING
BARRY Roche knows that, when you get to a certain age in football, the dinosaur jokes are inevitable, but he has no plans to allow his career to become extinct just yet.
The 37-year-old Morecambe keeper is knee-deep in his 20th season as a professional, over 600 appearances under his belt and a glorious, solitary goal – against Portsmouth in February 2016.
Times have changed since the Dubliner’s debut for Nottingham Forest as an 18-yearold back in August 2000 – a 3-2 win over Crystal Palace in which he replaced the dismissed Dave Beasant on 89 minutes, before saving an injury-time penalty to preserve all three points – but his love for the game is unwavering.
Effectively playing on a rolling one-year deal since turning 30, Roche is hanging on in there, still first choice in boss Jim Bentley’s XI, and treasuring every second.
“As soon as you get to your mid-thirties people start saying that you’re over the hill, have got nothing left, but, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve still got plenty left in the tank,” he said.
“When I sit down, and people talk to me about my 20th year, that’s something I’m incredibly proud of. Proud
“If someone had said, when I started off at 16, that I would still be playing professionally when I was 37, I would have snapped their hand off !
“I’ve been lucky enough that for the vast majority of my career at Morecambe I’ve always played. I had a taste of sitting on the bench last season when Mark (Halstead) came in and did really well.
“Obviously, you don’t enjoy it, but you do get people at different clubs who seem to be happy with sitting on the bench and taking their wages.
“That’s not me – I need to be playing, I have to be playing and I want to keep going as long as I can.
“One thing that people who have finished playing say is that you’re an awfully long time retired.
“I’m not looking forward to that day when I hang up the gloves – I’m dreading it in fact – so you’ve got to get as much out of the game while you can.”
A rotten start to the season for Morecambe has left them hovering about the League Two relegation zone, with just one win to their name before yesterday’s clash at Oldham.
And though Roche admits the squad are used to fire-fighting – they have finished no higher than 18th in League Two across the last four seasons, including a nervy final-day-survival in 2018 – he made no excuses as the group gear up for what could be another battle against the drop.
“I don’t think we’d be naïve enough to think it’s not a concern; we know it’s not good enough,” he continued.
“We’ve been here before, had worse starts than this. What people – in my opinion – continually fail to appreciate is that we’ve got one of the smallest squads, smallest crowds, smallest wage budgets. Achievement
“Being in this league and staying up every year is an achievement. If you go and say that then you will have people in certain quarters saying that’s a lack of ambition, but you can only do so much with the resources you’re given.
“Jim (Bentley) and (assistant) Kenny (McKenna) have done an absolutely brilliant job with us over the years. They don’t get the praise they deserve.
“We’ve lost three out of five at home, played on Tuesday (a 1-0 home defeat to Walsall) and failed to register a single shot on target.
“We’ve been conceding far too many goals lately, so we’ve got to start putting things right at both ends of the pitch.
“At times we are playing some really nice football, but if you’re not getting the results it doesn’t count for anything.”