GROUND HISTORY TRAVEL

Barnet are the team that nearly made Stevenage fans forget all about their rivalry with Woking in favour of something a bit more debonair, a bit more classy, a bit more… je ne sais pas. Keeping it in the same county is what it should be all about, but the Bees went and spoiled it with their second promotion to the Football League in 2005 - the first time around, Boro were still playing catch-up after giving their South Hertfordshire counterparts a mere 80-odd years head-start.

Anyway, it seems almost astounding to think that the first meeting between the two clubs in a competitive fixture had to wait until the turn of the millennium, and despite Stevenage's relative youth, these fixtures often paved the way for some tasty matches, electric atmospheres, and fearsome bragging rights.

Stevenage's promotion to the Football League (and perhaps more pertinently, Barnet's ability to narrowly avoid relegation from it) should pave the way for more of the same, and what with Mark Stimson now at their helm, who would bet against some more memories to add to Siggy's wonder strike at Broadhall Way in 2002, Dino Maamria and Ian Hendon in 2004 and 'One Barnet Council' on Boxing Day '04.

Marvellous, isn't it?

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