Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey believes the tight calls went against his side again against York City Knights, which led to their strong second half performance going unrewarded.

Crarey’s side gave it everything as they tried to fight back from an 18-4 half-time deficit at Craven Park and had had two tries disallowed for forward passes by the time Jason Bass’ score for York effectively made the gap too big to bridge.

That didn’t stop Barrow from trying, however, and they continued to fight right until the last, pulling back two tries through Luke Cresswell and Jono Smith before Wartovo Puara was held up over the Knights’ line by some excellent defending.

Although the two tries that were scrubbed out weren’t as contentious as those against Leigh and Swinton, it did leave the Raiders cursing their luck again, with their fight against relegation starting to look like a forlorn task.

Crarey said: “Tee [Ritson] scores again in the corner and it’s pulled back for a forward pass. I spoke to Tee when coming off and he doesn’t think it was forward.

“We were pulled for a kick chase on Deon [Cross] when he was definitely behind the line.

“But you’ve got to be alive at the end of a set, especially when you’re playing off your own goal line on last-tackle plays and we sat down.

“I’m not going take that away from young Jake Carter and Ryan Johnston, who were tremendous.

“Our structure today was real good and I though Paul Séguier played massive minutes, Alec Susino played massive minutes for us and I though Tom Walker’s first stint was outstanding.

“We’ve just spoke about turning up every week and seeing where it gets us because you never know, but York are second in the comp and you couldn’t tell that.

“With 20 minutes to go, it looked like we were second in the comp and they were down where we are, but they’re clinical finishers who are used to winning.”