PAUL Crarey was relieved to have finally reached the end of a tough season after Barrow Raiders 34-6 defeat at Featherstone Rovers yesterday.

There was little riding on the match for the visitors as their place in the Betfred Championship for 2019 had long since been confirmed.

And head coach Crarey, who has yet to decide whether or not stay on, hailed the efforts of his side throughout a year which has thrown up well-documented challenges both on and off the field.

“We’ve stayed up on merit,” said Crarey. “We haven’t been in the dogfight at the bottom and at one stage of the season, when we were at full tilt, we were matching the full-time sides.

“We’ve been competitive and we’ve won the games we’ve had to win, which is what you need to do in this division.

“It’s over, we’ve managed to stay up and that’s something some teams even with a full compliment of players don’t do.”

As for the match against Featherstone itself, there was little to write home about.

However, Crarey believes there are still lessons to take from it.

“I thought for 20 or 30 minutes we matched them, but it was a stop-start game for both sides,” said Crarey. “But they showed their class and composure.

“The difference, I thought, was they kicked the ball well at the end of sets, got repeat sets and put us under pressure, and we didn’t do that.

“The second half, the game never got going and they scored some long-range tries, but for both teams it was very sloppy across the board.

“It’s something we can learn from these top sides; you don’t have to score off every set, you can just build pressure and we didn’t do that.”