Pantomime Hearse

Tranmere (H) - EFL League 2 - 9th December 2025

Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls! Roll up, roll up! It’s the festive season, as we look towards the true meaning of Christmas and celebrate together. Gather the family, reject the Champions League’s bright lights and come along to Holker Street. Got your raffle ticket? Then I’ll begin.

Welcome to Barrow AFC’s much-loved version of ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, where a series of neither hilarious nor unexpected events create the true meaning of a Barrow AFC Christmas at Holker Street.

The tale concerns an emperor who has an obsession with fancy new clothes and spends lavishly on them at the expense of state matters. One day, two conmen visit the emperor’s capital. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are either incompetent or stupid.

This covers pretty much all boardrooms in the country, ours is decent. But hope makes fools of us all; and football is the arena where this is displayed most starkly. Where else would successful businessmen consistently spend their own money on an unsustainable business, charged with the dreams and frustrations of a cast of thousands and ill-prepared for an industry full of hucksters and fantasists? And that’s just the EFL.

Any pantomime has five traditional elements:

Role reversal: At Barrow, this is currently most starkly illustrated by a complete change of performance after the interval. Last night was a less than amusing change of direction – a workmanlike and bright (if completely toothless) first half, then a plunge off a cliff.

With a hurricane at their backs, we bore down on the Tranmere goal. Balls whizzed and fizzed like wayward rockets across the box, never finding a home. Josh Gordon, as ever, worked hard but fruitlessly.

Aside from being roared at to press to create an error and manhandled with no protection whatsoever, he just never arrives in the right place at the right time.

Part of the issue is the role reversal of positions and complete lack of understanding by the players of what it is they are supposed to be doing, and when to do it. Nothing typifies this as much as Connor Mahoney. Or maybe he just can’t be arsed.

‘Mentality’, as a beleaguered Andy Whing had it. However, it’s him who does the half-time talk and him who picks the team.

We have wingers as wing-backs, no one as full-backs, ‘two tens’ who aren’t affecting the game and isolate our striker. We’ve a left full-back one side of a three with a centre-half on the other. Role reversal? Knowledge of their roles would be a start.

Tranmere, limited or no better, and now with the wind at their backs, trundled towards the unfocused sludge of us, watched grimly by a bitterly unimpressed crowd.

Weirdly, we waited passively, not making any changes.

A storyline of good vs evil: Enter, centre stage: THE REFEREE! BOOOOOOOOOO! Was it a free kick? OH NO IT WASN’T. Well, it wasn’t, but the Killer Clown in Black, with an evil chuckle, blew for a free kick where none remotely existed. There was an air of inevitability as the ball arched elegantly into the net, and their plodders raced to celebrate with the couple of hundred escapees from Birkenhead in the corner.

I noticed two of our local vicars in front of me, each a regular supporter of one of the sides. What would God have made of this, I wondered? Is lower League Two football some painful twist of the spiritual wheel, a pilgrim’s lack of progress?

You can tell from those musings how unconvincing we were attempting to turn the game around. Next, going away from goal and possibly outside the area slightly, another Tranmere player threw themselves down after a twitch from one of our defenders. PENALTY? Oh no it isn’t. OH YES IT IS! As the villain of the piece, cackling inwardly and well aware he’ll be back in the National League after this shitshow, awarded a very soft pen. And in it went.

At this point in a pantomime, where all seems lost, there’s usually a torch song-type moment, where our noble hero or heroine resolves to reach for the stars, to overcome adversity, to slay that giant and skip brightly to the end of the rainbow. We brought on Elliot Newby and Innes Cameron. And our fairy godmother, Rob Kelly, has gone to Reading of all places.

Slapstick comedy: As unfunny as our second-half attempts were to attack with purpose (Mike Dean’s half-time cameo at least was amusing), the ball was weaving hilariously around. Tranmere’s defenders enjoyed dancing with Josh Gordon, whirling and twirling him around like a ragdoll Cinderella as we hissed and booed at the officials and their gibbering oaf of a manager.

Colourful, eccentric costumes: Niall Canavan, getting into the spirit of Christmas banter early, had come dressed as an experienced League Two defender and captain of our club. Say what you like about the harshness of the ref, he misjudged the flight of the ball, got caught wrong side and, with some pantomime horse-like attempt to get back on terms, gave away penalty number two.

Yes, it was questionable, but The Clown had been given a decision to make. Naz has been a good servant, but this was embarrassing.

Audience participation: At this point, the booing had subsided somewhat into dark muttering as bleak thoughts turned to the online shoeing and potential portents of relegation laid bare. A long way from ‘getting behind the lads’, but to be fair, we had needed something to get behind. Many drifted away, one or two stooping to lambast the coaching staff. IT’S FUCKING CLUELESS, yelled a gentleman on his way out, possibly never to return.

At least the vicars looked calm and happy, faith brings perspective, I guess.

After the ref produced a final agony of making us watch an extra nine minutes of this utter tripe, collars were turned up and weathered faces turned towards the exits. Low crowd. Low mood. Low point.

Derived from a fairy tale or nursery story: Our successful Emperor’s New Clothes panto is repeated at least once every two years at Barrow AFC. Each time, we are convinced of the wonderfulness of a particular management team, playing style or set of players.

Swift action follows, the new shiny thing is identified, the board’s own money is spaffed up the wall and there’s a cosy chat on Radio Cumbria to suggest that this won’t happen again. Occasionally it doesn’t.

But who is it that is selling these illusions to the board? A lot of post-match argument about whether it was Whing or Wood who should wither on the vine. Or both. Or neither. Or the ref. Or maybe get rid, but then what? Or Neil McDonald will lead us Gandalf-like to a greater tactical self-awareness?

In the panto, finally, the ‘weavers’ report that the emperor’s suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretence, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the emperor is wearing nothing at all.

Epilogue

And as the emperor realised he was naked, the next day Andy was sacked – probably to re-emerge at a panto in the National League system to lick his wounds. I hope so. Lovely guy, wish him all the best, Andy, you’re a family-minded bloke, so for your own sake get something in the Midlands.

And the board went for the temporary Gandalf.

We might have given him more time, but it wasn’t looking pretty, his tactical shape incoherent, the players looked dispirited, he himself stressed and lacking self-belief.

Was it him? Was it the players? No doubt there will be lots of ‘looking in the mirror’, ‘coming together as a club’ guff trotted out by senior pros, who really need to up their game.

Equally, we will all be tantalised with a few judicious morsels fed to the maw of speculation and gossip that will doubtless now occur. Again.

But who brought them in? Who will be again charged with picking round the detritus of lower-league management for our next saviour / victim? Not to mention a transfer window.

What I will say is that at the dim and distant meet-the-board, we were told by Iain Wood that lessons had been learned. We had recruited hungry players, more experienced and tough, to battle away in the cause of blue-collar Barra.

On the evidence so far...OH NO THEY AREN’T!

The board are intelligent, successful people who, along with the Trust, stick countless hundreds of thousands on the outcome of our never-ending pantomime.

They don’t do it to make money, quite the opposite. They aren’t crooks, they love the club and town.

But to go back to the Emperor’s New Clothes, who sold them the suit?

Because maybe that wasn’t Andy Whing.

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