Barrow’s push for a promotion play-off place suffered a severe setback at Crewe where they crashed to a 3-0 defeat.
Two first-half penalties from Dan Agyei put the Railwaymen in charge as they went on to record back-to-back wins.
It was only Barrow’s second defeat in their last eight games, which was how they had bounced back into play-off contention after a mid-season blip.
There was some controversy about the award of the first penalty on 13 minutes. A good shot from Callum Ainley had been pushed round the post by Paul Farman but from the corner former Crewe defender George Ray was judged to have held Crewe’s Connor O’Riordan by referee Sam Purkiss.
Patrick Brough had a chance to equalise soon afterwards when home keeper James Beadle pushed out a cross, but the Barrow defender sliced his shot wide.
The second penalty came on 33 minutes and was a bit more obvious. When Agyei raced into the box he was caught by Sam Foley and from the spot Agyei found the same part of the net to beat Farman.
Barrow were certainly more dangerous in the second-half and Niall Canavan saw his shot cannon off home defender Rio Adebisi’s knee against the bar.
Farman came to Barrow’s rescue late on when he kept out Courtney Baker-Richardson’s fierce long range strike.
To complete a miserable afternoon for the Bluebirds it was Agyei who turned provider to slip in Chris Long and he confidently fired into the far corner of the net.
