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That was a pretty quiet affair, a dull match, and Barry issued four yellow cards during the ninety minutes with Arthur Gnohere the only Burnley player to collect one.
There's nothing better to get the Turf Moor crowd going than when it thinks it is being hard done to and what the Clarets consider to be a bad refereeing decision or two will always increase the volume of support.
Well there is no doubt that the fans thought they had been done to on Barry's previous Turf Moor game, a game against league leaders Bristol Rovers in February 2000.
With just 27 minutes on the clock out came the red card, not just for any old player but for the player we relied on heavily to get our goals, our Natural Born Claret Andy Payton. To be fair to Barry it was all on the say so of a linesman who had seen just some of what was going on in the penalty box. The perpetrator. Bristol Rovers' Trevor Challis, got away scot-free because of a case of mistaken identity.
However to be fair he did us a favour, the sending off persuaded the club to bring in Ian Wright and we went on to win promotion.
This season Neale Barry is averaging just about four yellow cards per game with 54 in 13 games and there have been just 3 red cards. There is no doubt that you are more likely to get a yellow card from him if you are playing away from home, in fact twice as likely, with just 18 of those yellow cards having gone to home team players and 36 to away team players.
One of the red cards was for Shaun Wright-Phillips of Manchester City in his last game, City's 3-1 defeat at Middlesbrough and there can be no criticism of the referee for that decision. The other two though were both controversial and both in the same match when he dismissed Rob Lee and Adam Murray of Derby in their 0-0 draw at Bradford.
But he isn't a referee known for handing out red cards and there were only three in total last season. With more suspensions looming for the Clarets we can only hope that he keeps that particular card in his pocket tonight.
