About Barrington Sports

Above: Previous logos highlighting our longstanding hockey heritage. Barrington Sports has since extended its specialist focus to other sports including cricket, rugby, netball and running.

THE EARLY YEARS

It all began back in October 1982. Having returned from working in Kenya, Barry (Barrington) Dolby said goodbye to corporate life, and took the plunge into the sports retail and wholesale sector by opening a small sports outlet in Goostrey, Cheshire. Whilst a keen cricketer at the time, Barry actually found his big opening in hockey, at a regional tournament near the Wirral in early 1983. Interest overflowed in his array of Mercian and DFV hockey sticks specially brought in for the day. He knew then, as we know now, that being a true sports specialist was where we wanted to firmly position ourselves.
 

By 1984, Barrington Sports had moved to a larger outlet in Holmes Chapel, Cheshire. The hockey range had grown to include brands Dita and Slazenger amongst others. Cricket was also starting to develop and our specialist model was taking shape. In 1986 we moved to Knutsford, where we are still located today, albeit in much larger premises in order to accommodate our various offices, expanding warehouse and successful retail outlet.
 

Above: 1988 British Olympic Hockey Gold Medalists Ian Taylor, Kulbir Bhurra, Imran Shirwani, Sean Kerly with our illustrious founder Barrington Dolby (center).

By 1988, our lead in the UK hockey market and mail order business was well established. We also witnessed further success for UK hockey as a whole, following Great Britain's triumph at the Seoul Olympics. Four of the GB stars, including Sean Kerly, visited Barrington Sports shortly afterwards to open a new Astroturf strike zone. We still have the newspaper article to hand, not least as the generous reporter included, alas incorrectly, the Managing Director as one of the heroic Olympians [right]. In the mid-to-late 1990's cricket became a much greater focus for the business, which was welcome given a strong residual family interest in the sport. We even had a young Freddie Flintoff visiting the shop to launch a new cricket season.

DEVELOPING SUCCESS

The turn of the millennium saw a fruitful decade for Barrington Sports, including the development of a very close partnership with the coolest of brands in OBO [goalkeepers really are amazing people!], as well as the birth of a significant online presence. Staff numbers have also grown along the way. Our specialist knowledge, founded upon our in-house IT and expert customer service teams, has gained us a reputation for excellent customer service, delivering quality brands at competitive prices. Crucially, our staff is littered with keen hockey, cricket, rugby, netball players and runners; enabling us to excel at providing top class advice in those sports we specialise in at Barrington Sports.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Barrington Sports will always have a close affinity with the hockey fraternity and we are committed to reinforcing that relationship over the long-term. But we want to demonstrate further our expertise in other key sports as well, particularly cricket, but also rugby, running and netball. This will be the model for our team over the coming years, and we are fully committed to focusing only on those sports that we can sustain from a customer service perspective. Our energy will be devoted to developing the existing Barrington Sports offering to our loyal customer base, and to extend that offering to those players and supporters who have yet to hear about us. We will aim to deliver this through a core commitment to strive for excellence in both our product knowledge and service standards for the benefit of all our customers.

Please check back soon, this section will be coming very soon.