Barnsley FC 1 Cambridge United 1: Conor Hourihane's substitutes make difference on grey day for Reds

The clocks have not gone forward yet, and already they are counting the days until the end of the season.

Jonathan Lewis' stoppage-time goal on only his third league appearance claimed a 1-1 draw with Cambridge United, but minutes later his side were being booed off.

Lewis' goal had been made by Fabio Jalo, better in half an hour than anyone in sopping red shirts was over 90 plus. All the substitutions Hourihane had a positive impact.

Nine points adrift of their League One play-off target at kick-off, Barnsley had far less to play for than a Cambridge side in the relegation zone.

Watching Barnsley at Oakwell has been a pretty demoralising experience in 2024-25 but with club legend Hourihane in the home dugout as (interim) manager for the first time, you might have hoped there would be a bit of life about the place.

They did not even bother turning Erasure off when Hourihane emerged from the tunnel to applaud the three home stands

And once the game got started it matched the grey skies. Hourihane stood in the unrelenting rain enduring it for 90 minutes in an atmosphere, for the most part, of suffocating apathy.

Hourihane's substitutions and second-half tactical switch at least improved things, but not the extent that Barnsley ever looked like the "top three or four squad at worst" chairman Neevrat Parkeh claied the Reds to be this week.

They hogged the ball but for all their tippy-tapping around the final third, were rarely able to get it in behind the visiting defence during the first half. When they finally worked Davis Keillor-Dunn into a shooting position in the eighth minute, he slipped as he hit it.

The second half was played even more at the Cambridge end, yet Lewis' was only their fifth shot on target – albeit Davis Keillor-Dunn had hit the woodwork minutes earlier.

The more incisive visitors made much more of much less, and were helped into the lead by weak defending.

Dom Ballard sliced them open with one simple pass and neither the recalled Donovan Pines nor Mael de Gevigney did enough to stop James Brophy finding the net.

It ought to have been two in the 17th minute, Josh Benson's tackle ending his afternoon in injury without getting the ball away. Given three chances to find the net, Cambridge could not, blazing the last and best of them high and wide.

The atmosphere was so flat, you could hear the constant clapping of Hourihane as he tried to cajole his side, and the songs of the 266 away fans liberally spread around a couple of big blocks at the away end.

Max Watters had steered his shot at the goalkeeper when Kelechi Nwakali and Adam Phillips picked him out. Keillor-Dunn did as he was told when the crowd demanded "Shoot!" but put it straight at defender Michael Morrison.

Watters was not alert enough when a decent cross finally did come in, from substitute Jonathan Bland and when he nodded a header down to the perfect Barnsley player to pick out, Keillor-Dunn hit a wonderful chance wide.

The half-time boos were the most emotion the home fans had shown.

The Reds cranked up the second-half pressure, with Adam Phillips to the fore.

Picked out by Watters' lay-off of de Gevigney's pass, he shot wide in the 59th minute and the headers he and Watters produced a minute later had neither the power nor precision to find the net. He had another shot deflected wide.

Hourihane made a triple substitution and a formation switch to 4-3-3 to try and up the ante.

Jalo sent Brophy sliding into irrelevance but put his shot wide. Fellow substitute Jon Russell had one powerful shot blocked, another deflected in the space of a minute.

Jalo at last got animated, but at referee Richard Eley for failing to give a penalty when the he turned his back but stretched out his arm at a cross hammered at him.

Nathan Bishop did well to hold a shot Nwakali hit from distance in the soaking wet, then nearly let one from Stephen Humphrys – another substitute – through him a minutes later.

On his first League One start, 21-year-old goalkeeper Kieren Flavell showed good concentration to claw away a near-post shot from former Sheffield Wednesday forward Elias Kachunga in Cambridge's only second-half moment of note, 10 minutes from time.

Davis-Dunn came close to equalising, smacking the frame of the goal before Lewis finally did, putting in Jalo's cross in the second-added minute.

It was something, at least.

Barnsley: Flavell; de Gevigney, Pines (Russell 62), McCarthy; Benson (Bland 20), Nwakali, Connell (Jalo 62), O'Keeffe; Keillor-Dunn, Phillips (Lewis 77); Watters (Humphrys 62).

Unused substitutes: Hayton, Rodrigues.

Cambridge United: Bishop; Gibbons, Morrison, Watts, Malone; Stokes (Nlundulu 78), Stevenson, Digby, Brophy; Kachunga; Ballard (Kaikai 66).

Unused substitutes: Stevens, Bennett, Okedina, Loft, Hoddle.

Referee: R Eley (Derby).