WHAT a difference a year makes to a proud club. Or even two years.

Around this time in 2021, Barnsley, then bossed by Valerien Ismael, were gearing up for a heralded shot at promotion to the promised land of the Premier League.

Their attempt failed when Swansea City, led by Nottingham Forest-bound Steve Cooper, knocked them out in the semi-finals, prior to the Swans losing out at Wembley to a Brentford side who have since taken the top tier by storm.

Yet there was genuine hope in the summer of 2021 that it would soon be this unprepossessing club’s time to return to the promised land, two-and-a-half decades after their memorable sojourn amid the billionaires during the 1997-98 season.

How wrong expectations were. May 2022 saw Barnsley staring into the abyss, already relegated, and facing League One for the first time since 2018-19.

In a turbulent season, the club parted company with former boss Poya Asbaghi following their demotion from the Championship — with the Swede their second head coach to leave Oakwell during a woeful campaign, after Markus Schopp was sacked in the November.

Asbaghi was appointed after a run of only one win in 15 games led to the departure of Schopp, who was appointed in summer 2021 when Ismael departed for an ill-fated spell at West From, after a stellar 2020-21.

However, fast forward from the debacle of relegation to League One in May 2022, 12 months to the present day, a revitalised Barnsley are aiming to overcome fellow South Yorkshire rivals, Sheffield Wednesday in the League One play-off final on bank holiday Monday at the national stadium.

Proud Barnsley 

Barnsley are a proud club with deep roots in its community.

A previous visit to evocative Oakwell informs your opinion that this is a club with a loyal support, and where, as you would expect in a former mining belt, possesses a ground with a soul. In a world full of anodyne new stadiums, Oakwell is as antiquated as it is authentic, and as magical as it is an anachronism.

For there can’t be many places left in the English game that boast a stand full of wooden seats or brick walls — bright red, proud red — housing clanking, creaking, clicking iron turnstiles redolent of another age. Nor gunmetal grey floodlights that frame the ground, set atop a hill where from the press box you can see the top of a long-gone mine over the green hill in the distance.

But to romanticise Oakwell would be to miss the point, certainly not when you also look at the rusting corrugated iron roof in the main stand. All that matters to most fans is success on the pitch.

A club with their roots in a community struggling to adapt to a post-industrial world is a diminished club if they can’t get their act right on the pitch.

Loyal Barnsley fans, bewildered by the brittle change in fortune after their unexpected drop last term, can now once again look forward to the future, with an exciting young side managed by an excellent boss.

Michael Duff’s Barnsley 

Sheffield Wednesday finished one place and 10 points ahead of their South Yorkshire rivals in the table. And off the pitch, The Owls will now have more than 44,000 fans at Wembley after the FA reallocated an extra 6,000 tickets to the blue-and white half of the Steel City.

The extra sales came after the club sold their initial allocation of 36,634, with a further additional 1,355 seats also snapped up ahead of the showpiece event.

However, Barnsley won’t care a jot about Wednesday’s numbers, because it has been an epic season for the Tykes.

Boss Michael Duff was appointed last June, after a successful stint with Cheltenham and the highly regarded manager immediately set about turning the club’s fortunes around.

Duff, a 45-year-old Belfast-born former defender played more than 600 games during his career, split between Cheltenham Town and Burnley, while winning 24 caps for Northern Ireland.

Fresh from leading Cheltenham to their first ever automatic promotion from the fourth tier as manager in 2021 — his team finishing the campaign as League Two champions — a previously rudderless Barnsley took the decision to appoint Duff, who took the helm from the club’s U23 boss Martin Devaney as the Reds slipped through the second-tier trapdoor this time last year.

Quite simply Duff has been a revelation. Barnsley spent 205 days in the top six, the fifth most in the division, and went on a run of nine successive home wins to briefly put themselves in automatic promotion contention.

Defeat by Ipswich at the end of last month put paid to such hopes as Plymouth and Ipswich sealed the top two spots, as Barnsley ended the campaign with a single point from their last three matches. Yet there were no recriminations because canny boss Duff had already turned his attention to the play-offs.

Over two legs of the League One play-off semi-final, Barnsley showed just how organised they are under Duff, by edging past EFL Trophy winners Bolton 1-0 on aggregate after a pair of tight clashes.

Speaking ahead of the eagerly awaited match, Duff issued a rallying cry, saying: “We know we can beat them. I say it all the time, they’re older, they’re experienced, they have thousands more appearances. That might help, it might not. Our youth and naivety might help us. We won’t know until the game pans out.”

Duff has ensured his team travelled to London on Friday and will take his young side to Wembley in a bid to take the aura away from one of the world’s most famous grounds.

“We’ll have an hour at Wembley — just to get all the pictures and familiarise themselves,” explained Duff. “We’ve got a young team, not many of them have been there. We don’t want them gawping around Wembley once the game starts.” 

Duff added: “We’ll be the underdogs. It’s not me trying to create a narrative. They are the facts. They finished on 96 points. God knows how many goals they’ve scored, loads of clean sheets, 23 games unbeaten. Look what they’ve done after the first leg [Darren Moore’s Wednesday came from four goals down to beat Peterborough on penalties]. But, they’re in a one-off game with us now.

“The positive is that we know we can hurt them. I’ve said it before, going into the play-off games people talking about momentum — that didn’t worry me. I’ve seen my team train and work every day. We think we know what we’re going to get, hopefully someone can step up and be the hero.”

Back in March, Duff’s side beat Wednesday 4-2 in front of more than 18,000 at Oakwell, and will have more than that number at Wembley on Saturday, after already selling 20,000-plus tickets.

Two years after playing in the second-tier play-offs, and a year on from the dismal Reds finishing rock bottom of the Championship table with 30 points — four points adrift of a Derby side who had been deducted 21 points no less — you feel, that whatever happens on bank holiday Monday against the giants of Wednesday, Barnsley fans will still believe Duff and his young side to be heroes.

Because pride in your team, your club and your community is what remains when the shouting is over.

Whatever the result against Wednesday, Barnsley, after a truly dismal season a year ago, following on from the doomed hope of two years ago, have, at the very least, regained their pride under Duff.