BARROW Raiders head coach Paul Crarey says he wishes he could pull off a magic trick to make sure both his squad and rivals Whitehaven could beat the drop.

Raiders gave their hopes of fighting off relegation a real boost with a 34-14 derby win over Haven at the weekend.

But speaking to the club’s official YouTube Channel he revealed he wished both Cumbrian sides were safe.

He said: “I’d just like to say I wish Whitehaven all the best in their remaining games.

“I said before the game if I could wave a magic wand for us and them to stay in the Championship, I would do that.

“All the media stuff at the start is just tongue in cheek stuff to raise the profile of the game, so I wish them all the best in their two tough games they’ve got.”

Barrow are not safe themselves yet mathematically, but Crarey says they know what they need to do.

He added: “We’ve got one foot in the Championship at the moment.

“I think if we beat Widnes (Vikings the final game of the season), I think we’ve got a great chance of stopping up without going through the play-offs, so we’ve got to prepare for that.

“We’ve got a few injuries, Ellis Gillam looks like he’s done his shoulder, Aaron Smith came off injured, so it won’t be easy.”

Raiders also look set to be without Greg Worthington, who was sent off seven minutes from time along with Haven’s Owen McCarron.

Crarey said: “It got tasty with 11 minutes or nine minutes to go, when probably the game had gone for them and I’m disappointed that we had a man sent off, and they will be disappointed that they got a man sent off, because if it was for fighting it’s big ban for both teams, so we don’t need that.

“It looks like we will lose Greg. I haven’t seen the incident, so I’ll have a look at that.

“And they are going to lose Owen. They are big losses for both sides with the remaining fixtures coming up.”

Crarey gave credit to their rivals for the performance, but felt his side just edge things despite the one-sided looking scoreline.

 “All credit to Whitehaven I thought they were really good in that first spell,” he said.

“We opted to play into the wind, we always do, and it is really tough coming out, but committed a few errors that allowed them some field positioning, and I thought they were very good for their early points, and they stuck at it.

“It’s something we haven’t really seen from them in the last two games, so credit to their coaching staff for getting them up for it, and for 20 minutes there they looked composed, they threw some nice shape, they supported the ball well and they caused us numerous problems, with the field position we gave them.

“But once we got up there, I think the first good ball set we had we scored. It was a tremendous try from Bully (Andrew Bulman).

“There was no room, and he got in, in the corner, and from then on, we got a foothold in the game, and we scored some nice tries.

 “I think we were quite lucky to go in at 14-10 (at half-time). They probably could have scored by the posts, but they got pulled back, which I thought was pretty harsh, if I’m being honest.

“But in the second half we totally dominated the game.

“It was a great win. There was a lot of pressure on, and it was tetchy towards the end of the first-half, but we always say that the best teams come out on top and win and I would say we just edged it.”