For Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey, relegation capped off what has been a trying season.

Doomed by misfortune and a mountain of injuries, the Raiders fell to 62-8 defeat at Toronto Wolfpack last Saturday that confirmed their drop into League One.

Despite the disappointment of dropping back down into the third tier, however, Crarey took a positive tone when examining the game and his team’s season.

“Adam Ford, a young kid in his second game with his nose smashed all over his face wanting to go back on,” as Crarey pulled back the curtain.

“Tom Walker with a busted sternum playing big minutes for us. I can’t praise them enough, really. We had an excuse not to turn up and I thought in the second half we managed to do it.”

The match at the Lamport Stadium was a perfect snapshot of Barrow’s season, as injuries, bans and visa issues saw them bring 15 men to Canada, but only play 14 and none of those were anywhere near full health.

“I’m proud of the boys who turned up,” Crarey said. “You’re thinking 14 guys, three busted before we got on the field. You think ‘how are we going to get some respectability?’

"But we got that. Brian McDermott coming off said to me ‘great effort’, and that in itself speaks volumes to me from him.”

With just one game remaining in the Betfred Championship season, Barrow’s attention turns to 2020. While Crarey is envious of the resources Toronto possesses, he knows that he can rebuild Barrow into a solid Championship side.

“We just build again,” Crarey said. “We’re a low budget team and it’s always difficult to survive. We call it ‘on the cliff edge' and you can only stay on the cliff’s edge for so long. We’ve done it twice since I’ve been here now, rebuilt, and we will come again."

“It’s always going to be a difficult ask to stay in this division without the system being known and injuries, but it’s about being competing and we've done that all year. We just haven’t been good enough to stay up.”