Head coach Paul Crarey had to watch Barrow Raiders simply run out of players as their 44-18 defeat at Sheffield Eagles put them one more defeat away from relegation from the Betfred Championship.

Crarey will naturally wonder what might have been at Olympic Legacy Park had injuries not yet again left them short of able bodies, with the bumps and bruises eventually leaving them a player short.

That became two players light after Danny Morrow’s late sin-binning and Sheffield understandably ran away with proceedings in the closing stages as Barrow were left with nothing left in the tank.

Prior to that, the visitors had been dreaming of an improbable victory after Jono Smith’s 42nd-minute try put them 18-16 ahead after they had hauled their way back from 16-0 down.

Crarey said: “I thought we did really well to get back into the game. We conceded soft tries early on - a mistake from Tom Loxam, who was playing his first game for a while, led to a try in the first two minutes.

“Then we battled hard and when we hit the front, I thought we were well worthy of it, but we lost Tom Walker for the whole of the game after 15 minutes and we lost Danny Morrow with an Achilles problem.

“I had to bring him back on towards the end of the game, even though he couldn’t run, and we finished the game with 11 men.

“When you’ve got 11 men in this division, you won’t be able to defend, and they put some points on us at the back end of the game. They also scored when we had two men on the floor, badly injured - Duffy had to leave the field, while [Jamie] Dallimore hurt his ankle

“It’s been the story of our season really."