It has been a season of ‘what-might-have-beens’ for Barrow Raiders, particularly in the last couple of months, and head coach Paul Crarey had another to look back on during Sunday’s defeat at Sheffield Eagles.

The Raiders produced a superb response either side of half-time at Olympic Legacy Park as they fought back from 16-0 down to lead the Eagles 18-16 after Jono Smith’s try two minutes into the second half.

They were then playing against 12 men after Sheffield’s Brad Knowles was sin-binned for a dangerous tackle and it was during this ten-minute period that the game’s turning point took place.

Deon Cross looked set to extend Barrow’s lead when he broke through an attempted tackle, only to knock the ball on when he was about to go clear.

Within four minutes, Josh Guzdek’s try restored the hosts’ lead and they then ran away with the final 25 minutes to win 44-18 and put Crarey’s side one defeat away from relegation from the Betfred Championship.

Crarey said: “Deon did a little goose step and he told me it was ripped from him and we’ve got to believe him there.

“He travelled quite a long way after it had been ripped to lose it, so if he controls that ball then he scores under the posts and it’s an eight-point ball game.

“I also thought Tom Loxam should have scored in the corner as he should have gone low and knocked the flags out.

“At the other end of the scale, their hooker throws a dummy and we’ve worked a lot on goalline defence because of the previous week against Bradford and we’ve conceded a try in exactly the same manner.”

It was another afternoon where Crarey couldn’t fault the effort of his players, but admitted they were undone by some poor decision-making, as well as by suffering a multitude of injuries mid-game yet again.

“It’s just fatigue and you switch off when you’ve done big minutes,” Crarey said.

“Alec Susino again was outstanding and I thought Glenn Riley was good, Tom [Walker] was good in his first spell, but we knew we’d only get one spell out of him because of his shoulder.

“We just had nobody left to put on the field.

“It’s been a difficult, difficult year but the club will bounce back from it, I’m sure of that. It’s a good club with great fans and we’ll just rebuild again.”