John McCormick writes: I’m setting this up on Tuesday, as the Northwest News is carrying an article about the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. ‘As if,’ I’m thinking.
There’s a dearth of funding, in contrast to the money spent on crossrail, so travel between cities like Newcastle, Hull and Liverpool isn’t going to improve before I stop going to matches. And it’s worse for all of the satellites outside the big cities. Yet football fans, ours especially, will still go to towns in Cumbria, Lancs and Yorks (and farther south) – to places which have their own football communities and often wider histories which the south would do well to remember.
And with that in mind, here’s Pete Sixsmith to remind you of some of that history.
Today he turns his hand to Barnsley, probably originating in Anglo-Saxon times (hence the “ley”), mentioned in the Domesday book and with a venerable football club which has done more than many may think, including FA and League cups and a short spell in what we now call the Premier League …