Horsham star Danny Barker spoke to ParkLife Sport about the key role he played in Horsham’s “priceless” experience drawing 3-3 away at Barnsley in the First Round of the FA Cup.
He said: “The feeling on the pitch (at Oakwell) was the best I’ve ever had. If you could bottle that feeling up and basically sell it, it would be priceless, honestly, especially for that third goal.
“It took me like three seconds to realise what had happened and then we were sprinting off celebrating as a team! That was the best feeling I’ve ever had on a pitch 100%.”
The initial match at Oakwell back on Friday, 3rd November was moved to a Friday night rather than the usual Saturday time kick-off, despite not being televised due to policing issues in Yorkshire. As a result, the switch prevented a number of the Lardy Army supporters from making the 480 mile round trip, fortunately it didn’t stop those who made the trip to South Yorkshire from having an incredible time.
“It was a bit weird, with it being on a Friday, I thought it was going to be on TV but they changed it all around because of the police, as they couldn’t get enough police around on the Saturday for another game going on up there. We had five or six hundred people up there and it was carnage still with that, so I don’t know what it would be like on a Saturday.
“The best bit was when we were doing the huddle before the game and you had all the Horsham boys singing their songs, that was a goosebumps moment for me.
“It was an incredible experience. I had played a few games in stadiums like that before, but that was the first time where it was a first team experience, so especially with the away fans being in the corner as you walk out from the tunnel, was quite mental to be fair.”
“It was nuts to be fair, to score 1 would’ve been amazing but to score 3 was unbelievable. When it went to 3-2 to them, most of us ran out of steam so we were thinking of keeping it tight at 3-2, but then next minute we burst away and scored to make it 3-3. When the board went up and there were 7 minutes left, we were dying and just hanging on, I just remember in the last 30 seconds they had a corner and they whipped it in I thought to myself ‘oh my god, they’re going to score this, but luckily it missed everyone by an inch’ and we got through and the celebrations were carnage afterwards.”
Isthmian Premier Division side Horsham weren’t a strangers to the First Round; visiting Carlisle in 2021 and even making the Second Round back in the 2007/08 season after beating Chippenham Town in Round One to set up a tie at home against the highest ranked side in the competition at the time in: Swansea City.
Barker himself has played in some big matches in his time; captaining Brighton & Hove Albion at youth level, winning the Isthmian Premier Division with Worthing and even last season winning the Sussex Senior Cup with the Rebels too.
However, the 24-year-old had never been this far in the World’s oldest cup competition…
“This is the furthest I’ve ever been in the competition by a long stretch. Usually I play one or two games but don’t get much further than that, so it has put a thing in my head where every year you want to go and do more and more (than the years previous). You never think it’s going to be possible to go that far, you always think it will be other teams, so that aspect of wanting to play other teams and challenge yourself is great.
“It’s good for everyone, it brings the whole community together and all the fans too.”
“It brings the whole community together and all the fans too.”
The Lardy Army currently sit 10th in the Isthmian Premier Division but with three games in hand on fifth placed Hastings United and only four points behind them. Dominic Di Paola’s side will be hoping to reach the play-offs now that they can have full focus on the league.
“Aim is definitely to now get up the right end of the table, we have a few games in hand on everyone now, it’s time to focus on the league now as I think everyone was a bit distracted on Saturday against Hashtag, hence the result but now we can properly focus on the league and see how far we can go.”
Barker played the full 90′ minutes away at Oakwell but after picking up a yellow card for a challenge on ex-Liverpool midfielder Herbie Kane, in the first half of the replay at the Camping World Community Stadium, unfortunately he was withdrawn at half-time.
“It was annoying because I had the mindset of wanting to test myself against this lot, hence why in the away leg we were sat quite deep but in the home leg I wanted to be more aggressive.
“I probably ended up being too aggressive, as before my yellow card, I committed a foul which was quite tough and then going and doing that made the gaffer not want to take a risk which was gutting but it is what it is.”
It was a busy day for Barker and his team mates who as well as playing semi-professional football have full-time jobs which can lead to extremely full on time tables, the central midfielder shared what it’s like as well as the difference in level between semi-professional and professional sides.
“It depends what sort of job you’ve got, but in terms of focus, during the day you can’t really focus on the work you’re supposed to be doing, because you’ve got that excitement of wanting to play.
“Obviously, when we played them away we state dup in the hotel so none of us were working and our prep was spot on, but this time all of us worked so I don’t know if that played a part the first 15 minutes I guess, because everyone was a bit knackered, I’m not too sure, you can maybe look at that. But apart from that, it’s one of those things that everyone is used to now as we have Tuesday games all the time.”
“The fitness level, sharpness, when you’re fit throughout the whole 90 minutes, your quality doesn’t go. But, when you’re not then your fitness goes away in the last 10-15 minutes, when you get fatigue your quality goes out the window a little bit and you could tell that they were sharper the whole 90 minutes – one-two passes, two touch play, you could tell the level just with stuff like that really.”
