Head coach Paul Crarey put Barrow Raiders’ damaging 40-26 defeat at relegation rivals Dewsbury Rams down to a lack of composure, as his side let a promising position slip away dramatically.

A torrent of penalties and individual errors condemned the Raiders at the Tetley’s Stadium where they held 10-0 and 20-10 leads before caving in during the last half-hour.

Crarey may have thought the sort of calamitous periods that saw them concede 30 points in the final 30 minutes were a thin of the past after Barrow’s recent improvements, which had rekindled their survival hopes.

However, this big setback means they are now two points behind the third-from-bottom Rams and with Widnes and Swinton both picking up victories, this could go down as the day their struggle against relegation turned for the worse.

Crarey said: “We were probably over-enthusiastic at times in trying to win the game again.

“Deon [Cross] makes a break, makes 40 or 50 metres then he throws the ball across the field and they pick it, go to the other end and score.

“Then we dropped the ball from the kick-off after we went ten points ahead and they then scored off that set, while there were individual errors, like when Tee [Ritson] went up for the ball and dropped it and they scored off that set.

“It was about composure and we said before the game that we didn’t want to play them emotionally if we were to win the game and at times we acted emotional.

“There was a high shot from Josh [Johnson] and everybody piled in – we were lucky not to have somebody in the bin.

“For us, it was about composure and discipline and at times we didn’t do that.”