PAUL Crarey was pleased with the defensive display from Barrow Raiders as they chalked up their first win of pre-season with a 24-8 victory at home to Whitehaven yesterday.

Converted tries from Jordan Walne, Lewis Charnock, Deon Cross and Tee Ritson set the Raiders on course for the win.

And while head coach Crarey still saw other areas for improvement, notably some of Barrow’s decisions when attacking and their kicking game, he was impressed with the defensive performance they put in, even when Ryan Duffy was sin-binned late on.

“I thought we were much-improved defensively and our goal-line defence was outstanding, even when we were down to 12 men,” said Crarey.

“Probably, off their goal-line at 20 metres, we were poor offensively and we let them off by going wide to early, and playing when we should have gone hard.

“Our middle was killing it in the first half and I thought we went away from that. We’re a team who try to score off every play and we’ve got to stop that.

“We’ve got to try to build pressure on every play at the back end of sets and develop a good kicking game.”

Crarey is, however, waiting on news of whether Stargroth Amean will be ruled out for any length of time after the Papua New Guinean off-season signing was forced to leave the field in the 48th minute.

“We left him out there and he wanted to stay out, and he might have little tear in his pec but I hope not,” said Crarey, adding: “He seemed all right at the end of the game.

“You can be lucky or unlucky, and we’ve picked up some niggly little injuries so we cannot afford to leave players out there.”