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HATCH,
Liam
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Born In Hitchin On
03/04/1982
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England
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Player
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The footballing equivalent of Marmite. Y’know, you either love him or hate him.
If you like him, probably look away now. This writer does not. Liam spent four and a half season’s with Barnet, after Martin Allen paid £23,000 for his services from Gravesend & Northfleet in July 2003. On his debut in pre-season against Arsenal, he was clobbered by Pascal Cygan and ruled out for a couple of months, making his comeback in an enthralling LDV game against Brentford, where Hatch came off the bench to score on his competitive debut. That game was October however and Hatch’s next goal came right at the end of February. This was the kind of thing Barnet fans were going to need to get used to, as Liam ended up with five goals at the end of his first season, four of which came in two spells of successive scoring.
2004/05 was a bit different. Liam did a job as provider for Grazioli and did weigh in with a fair few goals himself. That team was just excellent that year and it would be wrong to criticise Hatch in any way, as he did contribute.
However, once in the league, it got to the point of farce. No goal from one of our main strikers until Easter Monday. When he did score, he had the audacity to run past the fans who’d been criticising him, with his hand holding his ear... Yes, because it’d only taken eight months for him to score. He ended 2005/06 with a massive haul of two league goals in thirty five games. 2006/07 was much of the same, although he managed to go one better and score three.
Liam Hatch finally left Barnet and stopped tormenting some of us in December 2007. In August Barnet had accepted a £12,000 bid from Cambridge United for him, but he turned down their personal terms and opted to stay at Barnet and fight for his place. Fight he did, somehow banging in eight goals by Christmas. This prompted big spending Peterborough to make the funniest transfer offer in history: £150,000 for Mr. Liam Hatch. We, rightly, bit their hand off and said goodbye to Liam.
Of course, when we played away to Peterborough in February 2008, we lost 1-0 and who scored? His only goal for Posh. It’s hardly proved £150,000 well spent either. He spent most of 2008-09 on loan at Darlington and is spending the 2009-10 campaign on loan at Luton Town... outside the Football League.
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