Barry Town United v Yate Town (pre-season friendly)
Saturday 13th July - Kick-off 2.30pm
Yate Town travel across the Severn Bridge into Wales on Saturday afternoon to play their second pre season friendly against Welsh League side Barry Town United, the club where recent signing Lucas Tomlinson played for last season.
Last Saturday the Welsh side travelled to National League South Oxford City, relegated from the National League at the end of last season, for a pre-season friendly, and lost 0-9.
Yate played their first pre-season friendly last Friday evening when they beat Portishead 4-2 in a game played at Avonmouth FC, in very wet conditions. This was a good workout and Yate manager, Darren Mullings, managed to use most of his squad during the match in which Lucas Tomlinson scored the opener, before Ben Bament scored twice for the home side, either side of half time with two excellent headers. However, Yate Town then dominated the last half hour and scored three good goals with Ryan Hillier scoring twice plus a goal from a trialist rounding off a solid performance.
Darren Mullings will be looking further at a couple of trialists and again giving most members of his squad a run out. Ross Stearn picked up a calf injury in training recently and as a precaution was not involved in the game at Portishead.
Barry Town United (formerly just Barry Town) play at Jenner Park which has a capacity of 3,500 with 2.200 seats, where they have played for over 100 years – the ground having been redeveloped over time. There is a 3G pitch now and many years ago the stadium was used for greyhound racing. The pitch has a synthetic running track around it. The club has played in the English Pyramid system too, being members of the Southern League at times. Barry Town United has a long history and through winning the Welsh Cup has played European football. Around the turn of the century Barry Town would become the dominant force in the Welsh domestic game. The club would claim the league title seven times between 1995/96 and 2002/03 in addition to claiming both the Welsh Cup and League Cup four times as well as the FAW Premier Cup in 1998/99. 1996 saw the club create history as the first League of Wales side to progress beyond the opening round of a European competition. Following victory in Latvia over Dinaburg, Barry ousted Hungarian side Budapest Vasutas in one of several epic European nights at Jenner Park.
The postcode for Jenner Park is CF63 1NH and for those wishing to travel to Barry, the journey taking about 1 hour 20 minutes. Please note that it is a 2.30pm kick-off.