Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey had to reflect on a costly start to the second half for his side in their 38-14 defeat at Widnes Vikings yesterday.

The Raiders had their chances in the first half, but couldn’t find that finishing touch and found themselves 16-2 down at the break, but they were blown away by an impressive Vikings after the restart.

Within ten minutes of it, the hosts scored three tries to widen the gap to 34-2 and Barrow looked to be staring down the barrel of a heavy loss at the Halton Stadium after their recent recovery.

Widnes added one further score before the hour mark to round off a devastating 20-minute spell before the visitors restored some pride thanks to opportunist tries for Deon Cross and Tee Ritson.

Crarey said: “We talked at half-time about starting the second half really well and we needed a try to keep us in the game.

“We’d given them something to feed off and with the likes of Anthony Gelling in their side and [Danny] Craven, they can terrorise you.

“We came up with some soft carries on yardage and we dropped the ball, rather than have a bit of deception on the short edges to get out and they monstered us a little bit off some of our errors.

“We went through a spell in that second half – around 20 minutes after half-time – where we didn’t have a lot of ball and we defended, and when you defend like that, you can’t press as hard.

“We left our edges exposed and then the boys started to try and do their own thing in coming in and try and fix the play up.

“But there was a lot of effort – we could have caved in at the back end. They had a few injuries and had lads limping off and we stuck at it and scored two really good late tries.”