With the recent news that Bristol City have decided against signing John O’Flynn, it seems an opportune time to look back on the Irishman’s time at Barnet. In the first part of a two part series, Barnet Mad looks at his first season with the Bees.
Irish under 21 international striker, O’Flynn arrived at Underhill in September 2008 from Cork City. Cork were in financial disarray at the time and looking to save money in order to survive and a number of players were allowed to leave so that the club could save on wages.
O’Flynn had played in the Champions League, the UEFA Cup and the Inter Toto Cup with Cork before moving to Barnet and had previously had a spell in English football with Peterborough United.
O’Flynn had come to the club with a reputation as a goalscorer but had also suffered quite a bit from injuries at the time. He made his Bees’ debut as a substitute at home to Bury. Barnet had only taken a single point from the first six matches and the Bees lost the match against Bury too. However, they won the next match 1-0 away at Grimsby, which was O’Flynn’s full debut and the next match; 2-1 at home to Accrington. O’Flynn opened the scoring in that match, scoring in the opening seconds, heading home a pinpoint cross from Albert Adomah after only 29 seconds. O’Flynn was involved in Barnet’s winner too. Adomah was brought down in the penalty area with about 15 minutes remaining and O’Flynn took the penalty, but it was saved and cleared away for a corner. However, the Irishman’s blushes were spared as Ismail Yakubu duly headed home the corner.
After that, O’Flynn became a fairly regular scorer in a side that was performing badly and losing, but despite the fact that O’Flynn wasn’t really being provided with a proper service, he still managed to score steadily, though, to begin with, most of them were away from Underhill. O’Flynn scored both goals in the 2-2 away draw at Shrewsbury Town and also scored 3 days later in the 3-3 draw at Bradford City. He also scored in the 3-2 defeat in the FA Cup replay at Rochdale and the 2-2 draw at Darlington as well as the 2-2 home draw with Gillingham. By the end of the year, the former Cork star had scored 8 goals in 16 appearances, a rate of a goal every other match and looked like he could be the first 20 goal a season striker that Barnet had signed since returning to the league in 2005. However, the club were still struggling near the bottom of the League Two table at the time that manager, Paul Fairclough resigned
After Ian Hendon took over as caretaker manager, it was some time before Barnet started to win matches again and climb the table. Indeed, the Bees took just 4 points from the first seven matches under Hendon; O’Flynn scored at home o Grimsby and Dagenham & Redbridge. The turning point came in February with the exciting 4-1 home win over Bradford City. O’Flynn was amongst the scorers and also scored in the 2-1 home win over Rochdale before scoring twice in the 3- home defeat of Chester. Now home fans were beginning to see how important O’Flynn was to the side as he scored 4 goals in as many matches with Barnet taking 10 points a they began to climb up the table and away from relegation trouble.
O’Flynn scored again in the away match at Morecambe and then scored another brace in the 3-2 home win over Lincoln City. The Easter win at promotion bound, Gillingham, then managed by Mark Stimson, saw the Bees give a near perfect display with the strike partnership of O’Flynn and Paul Furlong causing the home side any number of problems and Barnet could and should have won more comfortably than 2-0. By this time, O’Flynn had scored 18 goals in 35 appearances, a goal every other game. Unfortunately, in the next game, at home to Rotherham, O’Flynn was injured and, as it turned out, was to miss the rest of the season. Two goals from Paul Furlong gave the Bees a 2-0 win over Rotherham and another goal, four days later, in a 1-0 win over Bournemouth secured Barnet’s safety for the season and they eventually finished 17th.
Unfortunately, the injury prevented the Irish striker rom reaching 20 goals for the season.
In the next part, Barnet Mad looks at O’Flynn’s second season at Underhill.