El Clásic-Lowe - Battle of the Bees
- Barra Punx
- Oct 26
- 4 min read
Barnet (H) - EFL League 2 - 25th October 2025
The pre-match promotion from the club had the game billed as the Battle of the Bees, but I prefer esteemed Beans correspondent Andy’s title: El Clásic-Lowe. Our grey-haired readership will remember our rivalry with Barnet from our non-league days, culminating in cheeky chappy and figure of fun Baz Fry signing Kenny Lowe for £40k in 1991 (almost 90 thousand euros in today’s money). It gave me one of my first proper hatreds of a football team back then, but now I don’t really give a shit. Any rivalry has long since rusted away and eroded into fleeting memories in my hippocampus.
A quick peek out the window and it’s time for the first big decision of the afternoon: shorts or strides? The sun is shining, there’s a gentle breeze, and I don’t want to lose face to Southern softies in the hardness stakes. Shorts it is.*
I arrive in good time and climb the steps onto the Popular Side. Mrs P has designs on one of the new returnable cups. This leads to the first battle of the day: the battle of the Bluey mug. Not being a regular frequenter of the Fanzone, I had no idea you couldn’t just walk in from the ground. After a bit of negotiation with the stewards, we find accord and we are granted access. Mrs P is happy with the mug; it’s just a shame we’ve used AI to create the representation of Bluey. I mean, he doesn’t even have the correct badge on his jersey. Bit of a nitpick, I know, but it would have been nice to find a local artist to pick up some work.
The club have done some great work in promoting this game: advertising boards, Bluey and Dave Pointer taking tickets to the masses, flyers and posters around town. Even the infirm have been catered for with flyers in the hospital. It’s very disappointing, then, to see such a sparse attendance when I emerge from the Fanzone. We need to keep this up, though. We haven’t packed them in this time, but keep it up Barra.
I take up my position on the Holker Street end, and it immediately becomes apparent I’ve vastly miscalculated my wardrobe. Google tells me it’s ten degrees, but the north wind makes it feel like I’m watching the game from inside a chest freezer. Mrs P takes every opportunity to remind me she told me to put a big coat on, from inside her fleece. Forty years of Holker Street attendance and I’m still making basic errors. Maybe the game will warm the cockles.
We start the game brightly, controlling possession with a confidence that comes from five unbeaten. Ten minutes in and Ben Whitfield plays a hopeful ball to nothing into space down the channel. Mahoney chases it down, outpacing a hesitant Barnet defence, and plays a low ball into the six-yard area. Back in the early 90s we might have seen God himself, Colin Cowperthwaite, seize on such a chance. Today it’s Josh Gordon, with all the time in the world to fire home. He reels off to celebrate, revealing a ‘Jesus Loves You’ T-shirt to an ecstatic club chaplain Robin Ham, who is standing just in front of me. So far, so divine.
Barnet have offered nothing: disjointed, low energy, seemingly wanting to merely exist for 90 minutes and jump in a hot bath. Gordon has missed a great opportunity to put us 2-0 up and put the game to bed. But we like to do things the hard way. On 35 minutes, MJ Williams has a tussle with Idris Kunu and inexplicably minces a forearm into his coupon. Kunu hits the deck; the ref flashes red. We’ve just come out of an injury crisis, and now we’ve contrived to have more suspensions than a Damien Hirst exhibition. We’ve gone from what should be a routine three points to an arses-to-the-wall rearguard operation. We hold on till half-time, but Barnet have the wind second half. Harrumph.
Our tactics for the second half quickly become apparent as David Worrall and Scott Smith emerge from Crossbar, with Fletcher and Mahoney putting on the big coats. It’s hard to disagree with that decision, but 45 minutes is a long time to cling on, especially with Barnet now buoyed by a man advantage. The proverbial game of two halves almost immediately plays out, with Stead and Senior notching two quick-fire goals for the now dominant Bees. They hit the bar and force an incredible reflex save from Stanway when a goal looked certain. It’s just a matter of how many, right? That’s exactly what I was thinking until the 68th minute, when second-half substitution Tom Barkhuizen releases second-half substitution Kane Hemmings in a rare attack. It looks like the chance has gone when Hemmings struggles to get the ball out of his feet and his shot is blocked by the first defender. However, the ball breaks to Elliot Newby, who strikes the ball in the general direction of the goal. It hits a Barnet player on the arse and nestles in the bottom corner. Fucking yes! Thank you God, thank you Jesus, thank you Robin Ham!
We’ve got something to hang onto again, against all the odds. And hang on we will. We’ve gone from comfortable win to comfortable loss to improbable draw in around 30 minutes.
As the guy off the Plusnet adverts used to say, that’ll do.
*Beans! Public Service Announcement: Don’t wear shorts to Holker Street at the end of October
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