Andy Whing ‘delighted’ with Barrow players after first away win of the season

Andy Whing was pleased with the reaction of his Barrow players after they won 2-0 at Colchester to record their first away win of the season.

The Bluebirds bounced back from their midweek defeat to Harrogate Town to claim victory at the JobServe Community Stadium.

Barrow took a ninth-minute lead when Tom Barkhuizen crossed for Jack Earing to score at the second attempt, after Colchester goalkeeper Matt Macey had saved his first effort.

They sealed victory in the 72nd minute when Lewis Shipley beat Macey to head home, after Charlie Raglan had helped the ball into his path from Regan Booty’s free-kick into the box.

Barrow boss Whing said: “I’m just delighted with the reaction and the performance.

“Look, we just wanted a performance and a reaction from Tuesday night (against Harrogate) and we got that in abundance.

“The lads were throwing themselves at the ball at the end, worked their absolute socks off and scored two good goals.

“They’ve had a lot of the ball and had chances from the edge of the box but I wouldn’t say they had clear-cut chances – probably the one at the end where Wyll (Stanway) saved in the 93rd minute, when we’d pretty much won the game, was their best chance.

“I know we can play better. We’re still a new team trying to find out what’s best for us a little bit, with new players coming in.

“The amount of injuries we’ve had is unbelievable so it’s been really tough for us but I’m just absolutely delighted for every single one of them.”

Colchester bossed the possession and created plenty of chances, with Barrow keeper Stanway denying Samson Tovide, Jack Payne and Jaden Williams, but the hosts could not avert a second successive defeat.

U’s boss Danny Cowley said: “We’ve lost the game 2-0 to a team that’s probably only had three shots on our goal all game. But we have conceded two soft goals.

“The first one, you just have to track runners – we talk about this a lot, we didn’t do that well – and then the second goal is another set piece, and at the moment, because we lose Ellis Iandolo, Ben Perry, Will Goodwin, we don’t have the balance in the team in terms of enough physicality.

“With the ball, we had 70 per cent possession, 24 shots, got into lots and lots of good areas but lacked technical detail.

“We could have been here until tomorrow and not have scored – it was one of those days.

“I would expect with that much dominance of possession and territory and that many shots for us to score.”