Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey believes his side’s 26-12 defeat against Featherstone Rovers at Craven Park came down to composure, after the hosts failed to make the most of their chances.

The scoreline at half-time was a one-sided 22-0, but territorially the game was more even than that, with Raiders coming close to closing the deficit on several occasions.

While they just couldn’t get the ball down over the whitewash - they were held up three times in the first half alone - Featherstone showed a clinical edge, as they scored four tries to effectively wrap up the result.

The Raiders could have caved in at this point, so it is to their credit that their injury-hit line-up made a real go of it after the restart, but their rally wasn’t enough to prevent themselves from going 12 games without a win.

Crarey said: “We got over probably three or four times, but couldn’t get the ball down. I spoke to them after the game and the word was ‘composure’ off their goal line.

“We had enough chances but we just didn’t score.

“We had a lot of disruption before the start of the game, with Josh Johnson pulling out in the warm-up and Danny Toal pulling out as well, so we had to put in Luke Cresswell, who’s a full back, off the bench and Ryan Johnston as a pivot.

“We only had one middle for the whole game and that was Tom Walker, so it was difficult to manage against a big, physical Featherstone side that were full of dual-reg [players].

“They caught us a bit early on and scored some great tries - they weren’t gimmes by any means.

“There was nothing much between us, apart from that little bit of composure.”