PAUL Crarey made no excuses as Barrow Raiders were beaten 56-0 away to York City Knights in yesterday’s Betfred Championship clash.
Jason Bass led the way for the hosts with a second-half hat-trick of tries, while Joe Batchelor and Connor Robinson, who kicked nine out of nine conversions and a penalty, added two tries apiece.
The Raiders were also not helped by having Jarrad Stack and Nathan Mossop sin-binned in the second half.
It was York’s first win over Barrow since 2007, having lost their previous 13 matches against the same opponent, and visiting head coach Crarey was frustrated by several aspects of his side’s performance.
“I was pretty embarrassed about our performance across the board,” said Crarey. “There were some good individual efforts, but our desire as a team was pretty poor.
“I thought they had a mountain of possession; they had 21 sets to our 14 in the first half and only four good ball sets out of that, so they kept us on yardage and kicked well.
“I thought our end of sets were poor and in the second half, they had 26 sets to our 15 so we were just juiced out and had two in the bin.”
The Raiders will now try to regroup ahead of the visit of Dewsbury Rams to Craven Park this Sunday.
But although he held his hands up to his own side’s flaws, Crarey was quick to praise York as well.
“It was a bad day at the office across the board, but I don’t want to take anything away from York, who I thought were sensational defensively and offensively,” said Crarey.
“We know that and you’ve got to be ready for them here, and we weren’t.”
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here