IT was a typical, competitive derby victory against old foes Workington Town in front of a very respectable 1,284 supporters on Saturday.

It was a lovely evening and the atmosphere reminded me of the Championship-winning season of 2009.

Unfortunately, as is usually the case when you get a half-decent crowd, the game wasn’t a spectacular, free-flowing try-fest.

This was partly due to referee Brandon Robinson, who was centre of attention and a target of frustration from every Raiders supporter in the ground.

He awarded 26 penalties and put Barrow on a team warning twice – the first of which resulted in goal-kicking half-back Lewis Charnock spending 10 minutes in the sin-bin for giving away a soft penalty just after the warning.

I was one of those frustrated supporters, but if you take biased emotion out of the equation, the referee is only a metre away from the action and is in a better position to judge whether it was a head-high tackle, or whether the ball was stripped or possession lost.

As a result of this indiscipline, Barrow had to defend for the majority of the game and kept the impressive Town offensive options at bay. Town played very well, and stalwart Carl Forber was pulling the strings in midfield.

Ex-Raiders and new Town coach Dave Clark was very pleased with the Workington performance, and said: “The scoreline might not show it, but we dominated the possession and territory for parts of the game.

“We were up for it physically and mentally, we knew we had to play a good game and compete with them, and we did that.”

Yes, Barrow’s defence is very impressive, but we can’t continue to be so indisciplined and survive on 30 per cent possession.

The Toronto Wolfpacks of this world will punish us severely, so we must cut out the penalties or else our unbeaten start will come to a disappointing end. Imagine how good we could be with 75 per cent of possession.

It’s our annual Good Friday, three-hour trek to the North East for our Easter ‘derby’ with Newcastle Thunder – someone at RFL headquarters thinks Barrow is near Newcastle!

Newcastle have lost their last two games against the same opposition, North Wales Crusaders. They were defeated 24-16 at Kingston Park in the League One Cup quarter-finals and last week lost in Wrexham 30-14 in League One.

After a promising start, they are struggling a bit, although the local press reported that Thunder were the stronger outfit for large swathes of the game last week and “battered their hosts”.

This was their first defeat in the league since June 2016 and respected Aussie coach Mick Mantelli has signed some decent players since being in charge, including ex-England winger Peter Fox, former Town star Liam McEvoy, Jack Aldous, from York, and the experienced Lee Paterson, who had a short spell at Whitehaven

They also play on an artificial 4G surface at the home of Newcastle Falcons rugby union team, and I witnessed a Raiders defeat last time they met here.

We should win this time around, but there can be no repeat of the recent indiscipline. Complete the sets and no penalties – simple.

Good luck.