Barrow wants a big response from Bridgnorth

Coventry Copsewood are the visitors to Crown Meadow for a crunch Midland League Division One encounter. And the hosts will still be hurting from the 10-0 hammering they suffered on the road at Cradley Town last Saturday.

Joint-boss Steve Barrow was blunt in his assessment of the trip to the Black Country.

“We had an absolute shocker. It was Halloween and the players took it literally,” he said.

“When you have eight out of 11 players having a bad day then you are always going to struggle.

“We gave a chance to a couple of players who have been pushing for a start and they didn’t take it.

“We learned a bit about the players because a few of them lost belief.

“The only saving grace was that the other sides at the bottom also lost.

“But one thing I will credit the players for is that, to a man, they stuck around after the game in the bar at Cradley. None of them headed off, they fronted up and owned it.”

And Barrow and fellow joint-boss Dom Heath will be demanding a reaction tomorrow against a side sitting one point and one place above them in the table.

“We have to take the hit to the ego and cope with the wounded pride,” added Barrow.

“The only way to put things right is to be better in the next game, which is a massive one against Coventry Copsewood on Saturday.

“We had played really well the Wednesday before when we beat Wolves Casuals from the division above in the cup. Maybe one or two players got ahead of themselves.”

“We have to improve our positional discipline and that’s something we are working on.

“Too many players broke ranks on Saturday and left gaps which Cradley exploited.

“There is simply no hiding from the fact that we were awful.

“We were at reasonable strength and a side at our level destroyed us.

Matt Dean rback knee injury

Christain Bak goalkeeping coach had to go in goal due to Ryan Cheshire being called away on work

“I’m not going to try to make excuses, there is simply no hiding from the fact that we were awful and Cradley were very, very good.

“We could have scored five goals, but we didn’t convert our chances. And everything Cradley tried came off.

“The players are hurting because it was a humiliating result.”