LIKE any good coach in any sport, Paul Craery is always looking for ways to stay ahead of the game.

Crarey's recent trip to Australia to visit former Brisbane Broncos head of youth Brendan Barlow and gain an insight into how the NRL side develop their young talent is a case in point, although his time Down Under was not limited to studying his own sport.

Barlow, for example, was able to pass on some of the knowledge gained during his time working with the New Zealand national rugby union team, while staying with Jamie and Sally Munro introduced him to the world of Australian rules football.

And Crarey is always eager to seize on any new ideas to apply to his coaching back at Barrow, be it from friends in rugby league or crossing over from other sports.

“Jamie showed us the structures of Aussie rules and my good friend Rod Reddy worked at the Adelaide Crows, and did some defensive stuff for them,” said Crarey. “It was just a learning process of going out there, as with Brendan Barlow, looking at the programmes he put in place there.

“I'll go anywhere. I know when Richard Agar was at Wakefield and he invited me to their training camp at Llandudno for five days, he said if I could make my own way down there I could come, so I took some days off work, went down and James Webster looked after me.

“I stopped in the same hotel as them, got involved in the training with Richard, and he's a great friend and very knowledgeable on rugby league. I call him a bit of an anorak, but a good anorak.”

The 13-man code of rugby has changed immeasurably since the late 1980s and early 1990s when Crarey was playing as a hooker for Barrow – and not just with the switch to summer, the demise of contested scrums and the game's authorities clamping down on the on-field violence of the era.

One of the biggest changes came in 1993 when the defensive line at the play-the-ball was moved back to 10 metres from five metres to encourage attacking play, although Crarey believes there are tactics from the past which can still be applied in the modern game.

“It was the era of the biff when we played,” said Crarey. “It was pretty brutal, there was the five-metre rule, and there was Nicky Kiss and all of those players.

“You had to fight for your head in the scrums and I think I lost my teeth against Halifax, and there was fights breaking out all over. There was no grabbing at your shirt because if you did that then you got punched in the face, but all of that has changed for the good and the game is quicker.

“But I think some of the skill and playing short with the likes of Harry Pinner and Lee Crooks, I think the game should be played more like that now. It's gone lateral a little bit and we just play sideways until it breaks down.”

Crarey's approach can be seen in the signing of fleet-footed hookers Dan Abram and the currently-injured Karl Ashall last year, plus the conversion of half-back Brad Marwood to the number nine role.

Another trademark of Crarey's Barrow team is bringing the wingers inside to play through the middle and gain quick metres – particularly early on in the tackle count and when playing out from their own half – in support of the Raiders' powerful, running forwards.

“I'm trying to bring that with three middles who can play through there and it's probably working for us,” said Crarey.

“Sometimes, you can't reinvent the wheel, you have to look at what was done in the past and the successful teams, and that's what we do across the board.

“We never stop trying to change what we're doing or improve what we're doing, and hopefully the lads are buying into that.”

Whether it be looking to refine tactics from the past, seek out innovations that can be applied from other sports or learning from friends like Reddy, Agar and Sky Sports' statistics guru Ian Proctor, Crarey is committed to doing whatever he can to improve both his own coaching and his team.

“We're all probably anoraks in our own right, but we all have a passion for the game and want to take it forward, and looking at every angle to improve the people around you and also the game, and bring the youth through,” said Crarey.

“Enthusiasm is everything to me when I'm coaching and we've got it here, and when I go to these places and speak to these people, even 20 or 30 years on from when I met them, it's refreshing that they haven't lost their sparkle.”