SHANE Toal earned the plaudits from head coach Paul Crarey after his hat-trick of tries helped Barrow Raiders score a memorable 24-20 win at home to Leigh Centurions in the Betfred Championship.

The Scotland international winger ran in two first-half tries and completed his haul 10 minutes from time with a try out wide which, along with the conversion from Jamie Dallimore, put the seal on an upset of the full-time side.

But he came up with some crucial tackles in defence to and, along with fellow Raiders wide-man Brett Carter, was praised by Crarey for how he has performed both against Leigh and in the other two opening fixtures of the season.

“I thought him and Brett Carter have been magnificent over the past few weeks from the start of the year,” said Crarey. “We play a system which suits them and they're heavily involved.

“Brett likes to run the ball and we've given him an opportunity to do that; Shane, we pulled him in defensively from last week, and he needed to fix himself up and not give as much space on an edge, and he did that.

“He pulled off a fantastic try-saving tackle, scored a try from 40 metres out where he picked the ball up off his bootlaces and no-one else at the club would have scored that try with those players gunning him down. He's opportunist and has a desire to have a go and compete with players.”

Indeed, Crarey was quick to heap praise on his entire squad for the way they not only competed with one of the favourites for promotion for the second week in a row, but managed to overcome the handicap of being a part-time side playing a full-time one.

He put that down to the attitude of the Barrow players and believes the fact 1,991 came out to watch the match at Craven Park shows those attributes are gaining recognition.

“They are a full-time team with quality players, and I spoke to someone who told me their budget is £1.6million,” said Crarey.

“It's a lot of money and I thought we were very good, and it just shows what you can do with cameraderie, passion for the game and commitment.

“We've got all of that and more at the moment, and nearly 2,000 people being in the ground speaks volumes about people starting to take notice of what we are doing.

“We'll have some dark days, we've said that from day one, and we'll have some good days – and this was definitely a good day for our fans, myself and the coaching staff.”