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welcome to the give 'em beans Blog
Saucy, tasty and your mother loves them on toast, but that's enough about the writers. Beans is back to tickle your Barrow (Barra) bones for the first time since the early naughties. An all new team of bright young upstarts is joined by a few dusty relics of Give ' Em Beans past to bring you a brand new but old fanzine, by the fans for the fans. So join us on journey though Barradise with whatever we can cobble together to brighten an otherwise dull hour of non Barrow related existence.
latest posts
Damson in distress
A jaunt out to Worthing via the capital on Saturday greeted me with a difficult decision. Am I to venture into the Midlands, following our Jekyll and Hyde display at the weekend?
Well aye, hence why you're reading this. With all other Beans operatives occupied, the bottom of the barrel has been scraped as you're greeted with my good self at the helm. I can assure you there'll be no poetry or novels here, but a man who's covered over 1,000 miles in the last few days watching
1 day ago
Way Out Worthing
The story this ballad will tell
Began quite remarkably well
Though a gruelling away
Was a pretty good day
With a sudden descent into hell.
It began in the deep of the night,
From DAZN's stupid scheduling shite,
Climbed on in Ramsden Square,
Half the bus seats to spare,
But all positive up for the fight
5 days ago
Sutton Shellacked by Buoyant Barra
Paul Hornby has been feeling something building. No, we haven't been serving Ryvita and Krisprolls baguettes in the hospitality — I've been feeling it too. We've had five games of footballing lethologica, searching for the word win — was today it? If it is, it won't be easy.
Before we dissect the dictionary definition of a game of non-league football, some sad news. Bluey has been kicked to death in a Hindpool back alley. He has been replaced by his more fragrant and better-l
Sep 6
Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards
The journey itself, however, was pleasant enough. A stupidly cheap first-class upgrade later, I arrived in the eternal confusional vortex of Birmingham New Street, then onward.
Kiddy. A very similar size of town, carpets rather than the nation’s nuclear deterrent providing the bedrock. Perennial non-leaguers, but with a foray into the Football League. Very, very odd and unintelligible accent.
Still, we weren’t short of inexplicably odd behaviour, especially when one of our nu
Aug 31
Glovers and Groundhogs
Thanks to holidays and a personal boycott of the evil empire that is Harrogate Town, the home fixture against Yeovil was my first chance to cast an eye over Murray’s revamped Bluebirds in competitive action. I’d been to the Blackpool pre-season game and got suitably carried away with the win before the resumption of league action knockBased on the above, to say I was looking forward to the trip would be a stretch of the truth. It is not notoriously a happy hunting ground, and
Aug 29
A Love Letter to Sam Foley
Friend of the fanzine, Seb White pens a love letter to Sam Foley, midfield maestro, cult hero, and a player who always gives it everything.
The WhatsApp notification pings and my good mate Jonny says, “Just planning the next Give ‘Em Beans…how about a love letter to Sam Foley?”
13 years ago, a 27-year-old Sam was an integral part of the Yeovil Town team that incredibly got to the League One Play-Off Final. As former editor of the club’s fanzine ‘On To Victory’ I’ll never e
Aug 25
Third Time's the C’H’arm: A Late Resurgence in Yorkshire
When most people think of Harrogate, they imagine a delightful spa town in the heart of Yorkshire, with charming tea rooms, independent boutiques, and cobbled streets. Sadly, this match reporter merely recalls Rhys Healey’s eight-minute cameo, Josh Falkingham’s pantomime villain antics, and Simon Weaver... well, just existing, really.
Based on the above, to say I was looking forward to the trip would be a stretch of the truth. It is not notoriously a happy hunting ground, and
Aug 23
Holker Street Urchins Leave Barrow Asking for More
The year 2026 and we've already hit more rock bottoms than a Flintstones sex tape, climaxing in losing our EFL status. A precious Fabergé egg that should have been bound in bubble wrap, put in a strong box and vaulted inside the DDH, instead we've chucked it over the garden fence like a careless postman. Let's not dwell. Summer gave us the opportunity to Ctrl Alt Delete the blue screen of death and reboot into National League OS 2.0 with renewed optimism. My own coping method
Aug 16
The Tale of Innes Cameron and the Stabilo Boss XI
If you were unfortunate enough to suffer a medical episode that meant you were in a coma for the past twelve months, you would be forgiven for thinking that nothing has changed. Barrow playing away from home for the first game of the season in a lesser-spotted third shirt, with Big Innes Cameron leading the line in the glorious sunshine. Rekeem Harper was also there, as was Scott Smith; you would be forgiven for thinking nothing has changed, albeit everything has changed and
Aug 9
THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MURRAY
Hope, football, and ‘Meet the Board’ nights spring eternal. As the faithful, sceptical, and hopeful gathered, we wondered how this one would come across. That’s not to imply any lack of sincerity, just that there’s only a certain number of ways this could be presented—and unless the three amigos were about to deliver their thoughts in the medium of French mime, or perhaps a Sanskrit mantra, we’d likely seen similar before.
Aug 1
Peak Practice
“Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
Radcliffe away pre-season. Third game in and first out of Barrow. Stupidly delighted to be ‘going away’ again, I waited impatiently for transport to arrive. I guess we need to practise too. Acts of faith take work, though optimism has peeked through this summer’s gloom.
Jul 22
PODCAST SPeCiAL: JOhn DUffin
It's preseason, the football's on pause (well the proper stuff we mean), but there's never a shortage of things worth talking about at Beans!.
Jun 18
Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover
I was 19 years old when we were drawn away to Dover in the FA Trophy quarter final. We didn't know it at the time, but we were rapidly approaching the end of the Vaughan era. He was getting his collar felt by Customs and Excise and temporarily falling on his sword, stepping down as chairman. The first ruptures that something wasn't quite right. But at the time there was still goodwill, optimism and a bloody good team on the pitch. We were only eight years post Wembley and th
May 24
The Resurrection Starts Here?
Forty-five minutes. Two thousand seven hundred seconds. That's allegedly how much time Paul Hornby had to celebrate our promotion back to the EFL until Bolton made the first phone enquiry for Evatt. Then it began again.
Football, post triumph or tragedy, needs to regenerate fast. So, at the business end of the season, even as the Premiership hyperbole approaches a juddering climax and we await the Champions League; even as World Cup venues and opponents are pored over, overhy
May 17
The North South Divide
So it was to an industrial estate adjacent to a Tyne and Wear metro station named after the venerable Bede (not to be anal, but it's more towards Jarrow than South Shields itself) that a cursed 2025-26 campaign drew to a close in the pouring rain for your correspondent here on Tyneside.
South Shields, the second placed team in the National League North narrowly losing out to our old friends AFC [Swearfilter] in a two horse race, the young upstarts
May 10
This is the End
I know… I KNOW.
It's just a small town's football team going from one place to another. Hardly more than a footnote in the local news. Ten seconds of faux concern on North-West Tonight. A blip on an agent's CV to be explained away. A fixed point on a graph as the line heads downward. I know, alright?
May 2
Barrow Circle the Drain in Cambridge
Barrow succumbed to a miserable defeat against Cambridge United which, when combined with Bobby Kamwa's 108th minute winner for Newport County against Oldham Athletic, meant our final day remit against Newport went from a highly improbable sizeable victory to not mathematically, but to all intents and purposes, relegated from EFL League Two following six seasons at this level.
Apr 26
There's no such thing as a free lunch
"Hello, yes, do come in. Mind the step. Just grab a seat on the couch. Or take the chair if you'd prefer a more upright experience, only the springs have gone a bit on the left side, so forewarned is forearmed."
Apr 19
Limbs 'n' Lifelines
Is it the hope that kills you or the knowledge that it’s the hope that kills you, that kills you? As I sit here trying to compose my thoughts, the nicotine of football coursing through my veins, I’m trying to make sense of it all. How? How can a team that has been so rank for so long this season pull out a result like that against the prototype League 2 juggernaut of team in Oldham? How can a team that’s had bugger all luck all season score a goal like Gordon’s? How can we st
Apr 15
Another Bad Hair Day in Barnet
The Hive London is a football centre near Edgware, London, offering football pitches for hire, conference and banqueting facilities, an on-site gym, cafe, bar and more. It was built on the former site of the municipal Prince Edward Playing Fields in Canons Park in the London Borough of Harrow.
Apr 12
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