PAUL Crarey was full of praise for his Barrow Raiders squad after they made certain of a top-three finish in Kingstone Press League One with three games of the Super Eights still to play.

Yesterday’s 26-19 victory at home to fellow play-off contenders York City Knights ensured the Raiders will have home advantage for the play-off semi-finals next month.

And head coach Crarey is hopeful they can go on to make certain of second to ensure any potential final is at Craven Park too, starting when the Super Eights resume at home to Workington Town on September 3.

“We’ve cemented our top-three place now and that’s a massive achievement for this group of players,” said Crarey. “We look forward to Workington and if we beat them it looks like second spot will be ours.

“We’ve been magnificent with our preparation in the Eights, our mindset has been different and you can feel we are intense in warm-ups and video review sessions.

“We’re fixing things up when we send messages onto the field and I’m very, very proud of this group of players.

“Everyone analyses us and tries to stop us playing, but across the board all 27 players have been magnificent and played a massive part in where we have got to.”

On the pitch, Brett Carter continued his recent vein of good form with two of Barrow’s four tries against York.

Crarey is delighted to see the former Workington man starting to show what he is capable of after the first part of the year was disrupted for Carter due to suffering a facial injury.

“Offensively, he was very good,” said Carter.

“He’s very good on yardage, he gets his head through the line, he’s very strong in contact.

“He’s been a bit of a revelation since he’s been given a run of games after he got over his injury and he’s done really well for us.”

York did not let Barrow have it all their own way though and led 7-6 at half time, but Crarey was impressed with how the Raiders players took on board and applied the instructions given to them.

“I said to them at half time, we managed it for 33 minutes then invited them onto the ball with some soft penalties and some ill-discipline, and we didn’t want to lose our position by gifting it to them in the game,” said Crarey.

“We asked them to stay on the middle because, at times, I thought we wasted their middle but then went off it to an edge and couldn’t make the numbers.

“But when we stayed on the middle, we got some numbers and I thought we scored some really nice tries.”