Last Sunday, Barrow Raiders went to Featherstone Rovers hoping to be competitive and came away with a fantastic 38-16 victory against a team who had won six on the spin and were due to go second in the Championship with a win.

I was on commentary duty at Workington v Oldham and couldn’t believe what I was listening to on the headphones with the Town fans sitting close by wondering why I kept shouting ‘get in!’ every time the Raiders scored a try.

The victory was even more impressive after Rovers had battled back from a 16-6 deficit to 16-16 with only 17 minutes left.

They had momentum and I thought they would go onto win , but Barrow went up a gear and scored four more tries including a hat-trick from Luke Cresswell.

On Wednesday, Barrow continued that good form and were very unlucky to lose 19-18 to Leigh with a late drop goal putting the Centurions into the semi-finals at home to Widnes and only 80 minutes away from the 1895 Cup final at Wembley Stadium.

But Wembley seemed a long way off when brave Barrow battled back from a 10-0 deficit to lead 16-10 and then 18-16 with six minutes remaining when some poor decisions provided Leigh the opportunity to steal victory with Martyn Ridyard converting a penalty and then the drop goal.

Leigh head coach John Duffy was relieved to be in the hat and said: “That game, and the others tonight show just what a great competition this is, we nearly got burnt tonight as Barrow played very tough and nearly turned us over. You can’t take anything away from Barrow, they were outstanding”.

Great praise and further proof that the run of current form is sustainable and hopefully can be carried into tomorrow’s visit of the ‘Harlem Globetrotters’ of rugby league, Toulouse Olympique.

After only one victory in the first 14 games, we now have won three from the last four league games and are playing our best rugby since the Leigh/Toronto period last season.

We now have nine points, the same as Dewsbury (who we play next week) and are only one point behind Swinton and Widnes and three behind Batley. We want Rochdale to beat Swinton tomorrow and York to beat Dewsbury.

We now look as if we can beat anyone on our day and with nine games remaining, we have captured form just at the right time.

Tomorrow should be a classic; the Frenchmen like to throw the ball around, so we must be ‘in their faces’ from the first whistle and play at a fast pace with good line speed and preventing the off-load. Give them time and space and they will crucify us.

It should be a great atmosphere in the sunshine, so let’s cheer the Raiders to another victory and two more Championship survival points.