Last updated at 16:35, Friday, 11 January 2013

A SICKNESS bug has swept through the Barrow Raiders camp ahead of Sunday’s second pre-season friendly against the BARLA Great Britain amateurs.

Title
Author
Copyright

Description

Coach Darren Holt and four of his players have been sidelined by the illness, which was affecting the Craven Park chief during Saturday’s 23-20 defeat to Keighley.

Liam Campbell, Andrew Dawson, Liam Harrison and Aaron Low have each contracted the virus and were prevented from training on Tuesday night.

Holt is hopeful it will be out of their systems come Sunday’s game, however, and said: “I missed training on Tuesday night, because I was really badly.

“I couldn’t go down and we had four lads who came down with it who weren’t training either.

“Liam Harrison, Aaron Low, Liam Campbell has had a bout and Andy Dawson as well – there are a few.

“It was always going to be this way, but rather now than later on the week ahead of the game – there was no way around it, it was going to happen one way or another.

“I don’t think it will affect their availability. Because it’s early on in the week, I think they should be okay for Sunday.

“We’re having a bit of a shuffle for this weekend anyway, with players who haven’t been in coming in to play, so it shouldn’t be a problem. All the ones who didn’t play last week will be playing.”

While his bug should have cleared in time for Sunday’s match with Paul Crarey’s amateur side, Dawson will definitely sit the game out with a knee problem.

He suffered a serious cut when tackled in the second half against the Cougars and limped from the field, not to return.

Holt does not expect the big Millom prop to play any further part in pre-season in order to let the injury heal.

“Andy had a very, very bad cut on his knee, right across the front of his kneecap and down to the bone,” he said. “We still don’t know how it has happened, to be honest. It looks like an axe wound on the knee.

“It’s not so much the cut itself that’s the problem, but where it is on the knee. Every time he moves, it is breaking the seal.

“He has to be very careful with it and it will take a week or so, or maybe longer, to heal properly before he can get back into it. But he has come back in really good shape, fitness-wise, and it won’t be such a problem.

“At this stage of the season, there is no point in rushing people through.”

First published at 16:29, Thursday, 10 January 2013
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk