Barrow AFC have already looked into what needs to be done around their Holker Street stadium to bring it up to Football League standard, should the Bluebirds win promotion this season.

Ian Evatt’s team are currently top of the National League and are making their supporters believe that a return to the Football League for the first time since 1972 could be possible.

It’s not just on the pitch where progress has been made, either, with AFC’s ground undergoing several improvements since the summer. The Cross Bar was refurbished, as were the physio’s room, Evatt’s office and the hospitality suites, several of which had windows installed, which greatly enhanced their look.

There are still projects in the pipeline, with building work on a new ‘fanzone’ next to the Cross Bar set to start on January 12 and the club trying to put a roof over the Holker Street End.

However, there are still several other areas the club would need to attend to in order to make Holker Street compliant to EFL regulations.

Speaking at a fans’ forum at the Co-op Bowling Club, chairman Paul Hornby said: “We’re going through the process now – we have to apply for League Two status and that’s something Russell Dodd is doing at the moment.

“We did it last year as well, in case we made the play-offs.

“It’s a sliding scale, you’ve got three years to do some things, two years to do other things and a year to do critical things.

“The main things are we need CCTV outside, for crowd control, we need electronic turnstiles, we need the capacity to be over 5,000, which it will be, easily.

“Over time, we need to make the dugout bigger, we need to make the changing rooms bigger, but you’ve got time to do these things.

“We need 2,000 seated and we’ve only got 1,000 seated at the moment, but we’ve got the three years to do that, so should we get promotion we’ve got enough time to do what we need to do in the first year.”

Hornby took time to highlight the work co-owner Kristian Wilkes has put into improving the ground, which includes looking into the installation of new crush barriers on the terrace at the Holker Street End.

“Kristian flies under the radar, but the amount of work that he has put in to the ground and our facility to make us compliant is phenomenal,” Hornby said.

“He has read the Green Guide [to Safety at Sports Grounds] from cover to cover – there’s nothing that man doesn’t know about crush barriers, about how stadium capacities are calculated.

“He has £35,000 worth of crush out of his own pocket, ready to be installed to make us compliant for League Two. This man is an unstoppable force when he’s on a project.”