Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey is hoping his team can cut out the mistakes that led to last Sunday’s match at Widnes Vikings getting away from them in the early stages of the second half.

Crarey’s side were still in the picture at 16-2 down at half-time at the Halton Stadium, but the Vikings scored four tries in the first 19 minutes after the restart to put the match beyond them.

The Raiders saw little of the ball during this period, but even when they did they were unable to complete sets, with several handling areas when taking the ball into contact hurting them.

The 38-14 defeat left Barrow three points adrift of safety in the Betfred Championship, a division that Crarey knows all too well from the last 16 months can be extremely unforgiving if mistakes are made.

Crarey said: “I don’t think we had a lot of sets in the second half – I think there was a stat that we only had 26 rucks and of them we won nine.

“We didn’t get any quick play the balls with nine ruck wins and the rest were losses, which meant we gave the ball up and when they score. they get the ball back.

“That period after half-time when they put three tries on us, we knew they’d come after us after half-time and that we’d just have a be clinical, grind a little bit and wait until their momentum settles.

“We are doing that, but Widnes is a difficult place, as Sheffield will say and probably teams in the top three will go there and get beat, so they’re no mugs.

“Again, the injury situation is probably the most disappointing for me. It’s just been relentless and then there are other issues, like Lewis [Charnock] getting an eight-game ban and now Jarrad Stack having to go back to Australia. It gets tough.”

The Widnes match again laid bare how part-time teams such as Barrow are up against it when they’re faced with teams able to train every day and work on their attacking sets.

The Raiders will be up against fellow part-times in Halifax on Sunday, although Scott Grix’s side have made a great habit of bucking the trend in recent years.

Crarey said: “We haven’t got the money over teams have – I spoke to [Widnes coach] Kieron Purtill about the money Widnes spend and you’d blow your brains out thinking about what we run on compared to what other teams run on.

“We’ve got to be at our very best to compete against these sides and if you dip a little bit, you get burned.

“We weren’t far off against Widnes in the first half and we had some good chances to score, but from a dead-ball restart they run 95 metres up the pitch and they score and that’s the nature of this division.

"You get away with defending that in League One, but you won't in this division because teams are off and gone, with the quality that they have to punish you and Halifax are one of those sides."