PAUL Crarey and his staff are determined to keep feet firmly on the ground at Barrow Raiders after they opened the Kingstone Press League One Super Eights with a 15-2 victory away to Whitehaven.

The result and performance were a perfect response to the defeat on the same ground against the same opponents two weeks prior, and took Raiders back up to second in the standings.

But although delighted with last weekend’s display, head coach Crarey and assistant Steve Rea will not be letting anyone get carried away in the wake of that triumph.

“There is a big thing we’ve got pinned on our wall saying ‘complacency is the enemy of winners’ – and it definitely is,” said Crarey.

“It’s two professional sides with the same budgets – apart from Toronto – wanting to win, so if you’re not on your game you’ll get a different winner.

“We’ve won nothing yet as a group and Steve Rea keeps our feet on the ground. But victory at Whitehaven was sweet, nobody apart from Toronto has beaten them at home all year and to keep them to two points from a kick they took is an outstanding achievement.”

Crarey knows his side will have to be at their best again this Sunday when Doncaster are the visitors to Craven Park, with the visitors having added to their squad since the 24-24 draw during the regular season.

Their preparations for the return to Whitehaven were helped by Barrow Island helping the Raiders squad run defensive drills at training, and similar sessions involving Walney Central and Dalton are being lined up as well.

The value of inviting amateur clubs from the area down to help out was shown by Barrow restricting Haven to a single penalty goal, and Crarey was pleased to see the squad had heeded those lessons.

“We do some goal-line defence principles with them and we work hard on our five-man getting to the pivot and our six-man defending the drop, which we did do and I thought it worked – it releases the edges to defend,” said Crarey.

“In the previous match, I thought we were off in all aspects of the game and we wanted to make sure we didn’t play like that again.

“Sunday was a reaction to that, and they slipped into a bit of ill- discipline in the last 15 minutes and weren’t focused on the job, even though there was nothing in the game, really.”