Harrogate Town opinion: Never has a home win been sweeter for the Sulphurites

Life, eh? Blink and it passes you by.

When my daughter and I attended our first Town match back in 2016, she was but 11-years-old. This week she attended her first match as a fully-fledged adult and it hurt considerably.

Yes, I know she has to grow up at some stage and I’m fine with that. I don’t even mind becoming redundant in terms of my job as part-time taxi driver since she learned to drive.

No, what I found particularly painful was having to fork out double the normal price for her to gain admission. I stumped up the cash as I think £16 for someone still in full-time education is a lot of money.

It’s the first time she’s attended since the last-gasp victory over Grimsby Town on Boxing Day. Back then the Black Sheep Brewery Stand was still terraced and we had a completely different defensive line.

Town haven’t won at home in the seven matches that they’ve played since. I’ve missed her company, of course, but at these prices every cloud has a silver lining.

The fact that she’s been less of a regular is down, in no little part, to the prohibitive cost of a season ticket, meaning she’s no longer a captive audience.

It’s also down to the fact she has a part-time job on the weekend and far more social engagements than me, but I hope this pricing out of some young adults and children is something Town seek to address next season. They are, after all, the future of the club.

I seek to manage expectations by pointing out the solidity of our new backline, but warn Molly not to expect too much. That way, we’re prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t materialise.

We’ve been playing well and picking up points at home in recent times, if not as many as we should have done, but with Hartlepool showing signs of slight improvement and Crawley showing every sign of pulling away from the relegation zone, we really need a victory today and I’m pretty apprehensive.

I think we all got a little bit carried away after the win at Doncaster. I even broke my own long-observed caution in these pages by daring to dream of a Town win at Crawley taking us 12 points clear of the relegation zone, suggesting the pressure was all on the home side.

That went well, didn’t it? I’m now prepared for a tense finish to the very end.

It seems it’s not only me. The first half’s played out in what I would call a pre-season friendly or funereal atmosphere. The silence around the ground is so overwhelming at times that I swear you can hear my finger-nails dropping to the concrete floor.

It’s a silence borne out of tension rather than apathy, of course. There’s no questioning the players’ efforts on the pitch, but visitors Barrow seem fairly content to drop off the ball and play on the counter, whilst Town remain in control without creating much aside from a Levi Sutton run and dipping shot which crashes off the cross-bar.

Our new defence (with George Thomson filling in at right-back following Toby Sims’ rush of blood to the head at Crawley) remains mostly solid, true to form.

If we manage to survive for another season in the Football League, this change following the home-spanking by Colchester will be one of the main reasons why.

A quick check of the half-time results sees Crawley leading. Our game’s there for the winning and it finally turns in Town’s favour with the attacking substitutions of Matty Daly and Alex Pattison half-way through the second period and one moment of quick-thinking from Josh Falkingham to unlock a hitherto solid Cumbrian defence.

He’s brought down in midfield and falls on the ball, handling it on his way down just to make sure he wins the free-kick.

Barrow switch off, probably expecting him to sit down and complain towards the referee, before pulling his socks up above the knees, getting slowly up off the ground and passing sideways. He has form after all, but we need to win this.

Quick as a flash, our skipper jumps up, slides a forward ball to Jack Muldoon, who finds Daly, who hits it early and hard. Paul Farman gets a strong hand to it, but it’s not enough.

You can feel the release valve come off and all the pent-up tension evaporating as the ball crashes into the Bluebirds’ net.

This time, Town don’t let their lead slip. Sam Folarin, who received a little bit of criticism for coming on late against Crewe and not closing down our opponents in the build-up to their last-gasp equaliser, is introduced late on again and this time plays a blinder in chasing everything and keeping the visitors pinned near their own corner flag.

At one point he even started waving his arms to whip up the crowd when the ball went out of play. He’s in the corner facing towards the offices at the time, but that’s a minor detail.

We survive the inevitable 96th-minute corner and it’s all over. The Barrow manager, Wild by name and wild by nature, has been losing it ever since Town took the lead.

He turns his ire from the officials to the Harrogate bench on the final whistle, jabbing his finger and screaming at our goalkeeping coach and anyone else who gets in the way. I’d like to think someone gently smiled at him and mouthed ‘one-nil’.

Never has a home win been sweeter.