Scoreline not a true reflection says Barrow Raiders head coach

Raiders went down 22-02 at the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium, but Crarey did take some consolation from the shift his squad put in.

Speaking to the club’s social media channels, he said:

“I thought they (Bulldogs) were very good in the second half. With eight minutes to go it was 12-2 and we had a big call on a shot on Greeny (James Greenwood).

“I thought it was a high shot 10 metres out under the posts. It wasn’t given. End of the set we go to put a kick in, and Ryan Johnston is cleaned out on the play, they pick it up and go fully 95 metres and it’s a try at the other end so it’s small margins.

“Then Ryan had to go off and we had no subs left. Ramon (Silva) is down, and they get another set while we are down to 11 men, and they score to put a lopsided slant on things.

“I thought it was a real tough game in the first half, it was 4-2 at half-time.

“It was just a battle and we defended well with some massive defensive efforts but we have got to be more clinical with the ball.

“I thought we’d worked on stuff during the week, which we didn’t do, and we didn’t get them when we had the numbers, so it is something we have got to work on.

“But attitude and commitment we can’t fault and the scoreline didn’t reflect the effort we put in

“We’ve got to fight hard, we’ve got to work hard on the training ground which we will do.

“We fixed up a lot defensively from last week and put a shift in, but again it is a difficult place to come.

“You’ve got to have high completion rates and stick to your processes. We sort of went off that in the second half and we dropped down to 50 per cent completions only because we thought we were chasing the game.

“Every time we got in good ball, we’d come up with an error on play one or play two, trying to force a pass rather than to get a repeat set, and then put some pressure on every player.

“Once we start doing that, we will become a force, because we weren’t far off even if the scoreline doesn’t suggest that.”