While many who follow Barrow Raiders were targeting the matches against fellow strugglers, such at Swinton or Dewsbury, head coach Paul Crarey has reaped the benefits of believing his side could topple the bigger teams.

For the second week running, Raiders defeated one of the sides chasing a play-off place, as they swept aside Featherstone Rovers, who began the weekend third in the Betfred Championship, 38-16 at Post Office Road last Sunday.

Before the match, it would have been hard to top the previous week’s home victory against Halifax, but that was exactly what happened against Fev as Barrow ran in seven tries against a team that had won their last six games.

The two wins have reeled in those aforementioned teams at the bottom, with only points difference now separating Crarey’s side from third-from-bottom Dewsbury.

Crarey said: “We’re in this division because we’ve earned the right to play against these teams, so if you just target games you’re going to come unstuck.

“We’ve targeted games against Swinton and we got beat, against Dewsbury we drew and against Sheffield, we got beat on the bell when we probably should have won that game.

“We’ve gone all out to take one game at a time and prepare well, but the big thing for us is that we’ve had a massive injury list, which has gone and we’re starting to get players back now for the run-in.

“When some sides will pull players back who haven’t played enough games on dual-reg, some will fatigue and drop off and think lowly Barrow are coming to town, but we’re focused now.

“We’re going to play some of the teams around us, but they’ll tighten their belts as well, thinking they’re the games they’ll have to win, so they’re the difficult ones.”

The only negative from an otherwise brilliant afternoon at Featherstone was young half-back Jake Carter having to go off with an injury in the second half, which led to a debut for the recently-arrived Ben White.

Crarey said: “He got injured in the first half, Jake, and they sent some traffic on and just ran at him constantly, and they’re going to to do that against a young kid setting himself up in the game.

“I think he made about 24, 25 tackles, which is phenomenal, in the first half and he didn’t shirk one of them.

“I think he hurt his shoulder and he tried to ride it out. I spoke to him at half-time and it was his call to come off and he didn’t want to.

"He went back out there and he took a heavy knock at the start of the second half and Ben went on and he showed some promise as well.”