Barrow Raiders’ youngsters are set to get more match action in Betfred League One next season and head coach Paul Crarey is convinced they have the right attitude to make the step up.

With teenager Connor Terrill recently added to the mix from Millom, there is a good group of locally-based young players in the Raiders’ squad.

Winger Adam Ford played, and impressed, in a few games towards the end of Barrow’s relegation season, while half-backs Ryan Johnston and Jake Carter were needed at times to combat various injury crises.

With the club’s academy side, the Furness Raiders, beginning their campaign against Huddersfield Giants on Wednesday, the next crop are being developed and could make their way into senior rugby in the future.

Crarey said: “With all these kids, we make sure the biggest thing they’ve got is a great attitude.

“Nobody stays with us with not a great attitude in our academy - Dave Cairns is real strict and knows what he wants with them players.

“He has a fun time with them, but they know that rugby is everything and Dave is very professional in that respect. They’re a really steely football team now.

On how the academy is really starting to serve Barrow well, Crarey added: “Connor is the fourth kid to sign from the academy since we started.

“We haven’t actually gone into the community and ripped it to pieces because we know how much support we get off the community clubs - there are more kids going up the coast from them sides.

“What we said we’d so was put a lot of effort into developing these kids and not take them away from the clubs until we know they can potentially play first team rugby.”

While Crarey is excited with how the younger members of his squad are coming along, he’ll want to be able to call upon his more senior players on a more consistent basis.

The raft of injuries that plagued Barrow for much of 2018 pales in comparison to what they were put through this year, as they were often forced to filed patched-up teams in their, ultimately in vain, efforts to avoid the drop.

Crarey said: “We lost Tee Ritson during a group of games where teams were playing around us and we missed him for five or six weeks.

“We also missed Martin Aspinwall and Jono Smith for periods of time and Lewis Charnock had an eight-game ban plus a fractured cheekbone. We haven’t got the money to bring players in when that happens.

“I know people moan about recruitment and stuff like that, but it was just horrendous bad luck what we’ve had and we just couldn’t replace the players with players we needed to stay up.

“I remember going to Halifax and Josh Johnson could hardly walk, but took to the field and I felt sorry for him. It’s just been difficult all-round, really.”