PAUL Crarey knows his Raiders players won’t need much pre-match motivation when they look to get back to winning ways in front of their home supporters.

The away dressing room at the Keepmoat Stadium was a disconsolate place last Sunday as Barrow suffered their first League One defeat of the season against a Doncaster team who were down to 12 men for the majority of the match.

The 21-18 loss saw Crarey’s men drop to seventh place in the ultra-competitive third tier of pro rugby league. But if Barrow needed any incentive to show that the Donny defeat was just a blip, it is tomorrow’s visit of front-runners Rochdale.

“We’re looking forward to it. It’s got the potential to be a cracker,” said Crarey.

“We normally get a reaction and we are not too far away with regard to structure and stuff like that. We are improving and we are massively disappointed as a group that we didn’t get the win at Doncaster.

“The big thing for us is we need a reaction. Looking at the tape of the game it’s just the one per centers with us.

“Our shape and structure was really good but it’s just getting the pivots to play at the line more. We need to make better decisions with our kicking game and also for our back rowers to play a lot tighter with our pivots to give them a chance.

“We were making 70 metres on yardage sets but we were just starved of possession in the second half through ill-discipline.

“We needed to show more patience. We had probably six or seven chances to win the game but we just didn’t take them. We were by far the better structured side and they thought they had won at Wembley when they beat us.

“They were jumping all over the place, that’s what it meant to them.”

The game-breaker came when Jason Tali capitalised on hesitation in the Raiders defence to pounce for his second try of the game to extend the home side’s lead to 20-6.

“The ball that Ryan Fieldhouse has allegedly not got under, he would never have caught it. It split the wingman and the full-back in half and bounced at right angles,” said Crarey.

“The disappointing thing for me was that no-one had tracked back with Tali who more or less walked over the line to touch down.

“If we had had some desire to track back with him and contest it they wouldn’t have been beaten.

“It comes down to small margins and that is something we have talked about and we will address.”