Barrow Raiders chairman Steve Neale delighted by signings

It is fair to say he was courted by several clubs, but we were determined to get our man. We sat down with the coaching staff at the end of last season, and we identified the need for a top-quality half-back and hooker if we were to compete in the Championship. In the shape of Jarrod and Josh Wood we feel we have delivered, and that pair promise to be true leaders for our team.

Make no mistake the Championship promises to be ultra-competitive with many clubs pushing the boat out and improving their teams. We have made the jump from League One and that jump is significant. We will need to be focussed every single week if we are to achieve our goals.

SIGNED: Josh Wood

The obvious first goal is that we survive. We know how tough things can be from our last campaign, but we need to learn lessons from that. There will be injuries, but we will need to react a lot quicker if we are weakened in certain areas and it is our job as a board of directors to keep on generating the funds to make those moves in the market should it be required.

Obviously, our supporters play a big part in that. If we can repeat or even build on the crowd numbers from last season, then this puts us in a healthy financial position. It is fair to say that we have currently spent our current budget for the season so we must start to draw a breath and hope we have put together a squad that can be competitive. I have a lot of faith in our bunch of players, and you can see the quality just by witnessing the training sessions.

We know there are a lot of good teams in the Championship. Leigh and Featherstone are putting together squads that are fit for Super League. Next in the pecking order are Halifax, York, Bradford and Newcastle with the latter full-time and linking up with Wigan. Hopefully we see ourselves in the next batch of teams along with Batley, Widnes, Dewsbury and Whitehaven with perhaps London, Sheffield and Workington battling to save the drop judged on their recruitment so far.

If we are in the top end of the mix of that third batch of teams, challenging for a play-off position then you will find a reasonably content board of directors. Yes, we are ambitious, but we also realise we need to grow in a sustainable way both on and off the field and it would be unrealistic to think that we will be going to Super League in 2023. We are more than happy with steady growth both of performance and infrastructure and we just hope that we have some memorable games in 2022 that gets the supporters begging for me.

Crowds of 3000-4000 playing the likes of Widnes, Leigh and Bradford, historically strong traditional clubs, with a great atmosphere created by the home fans and a large travelling contingent together with turning one or two of them over is where we want to be heading.