Furness Raiders head coach David Cairns will continue to integrate as many of the younger players in his squad as possible, after they hit a bump in the road against Wakefield College.

Cairns’ youngsters were well beaten 34-6 at Craven Park on Wednesday evening, with Wakefield by a fair distance the strongest team they have come across on the college circuit so far this season.

The young Raiders are still fairly early into what is effectively a new cycle, with them having to replace some of the players, who are now ineligible, from the team that won the AoC National Cup in the previous campaign.

That means lads as young as 16 are currently learning their structures and getting used to how the more experienced players go about their games.

Cairns said: “We’ve got quite a lot of young lads - 16-year-olds who I’m trying to rotate. I could have very easily kept the same team from last week [against Huddersfield], but that doesn’t help the lads who are not playing at all.

“I try to move them around and bring them in for at least half a game. Young Jack Stevenson, who went on the wing for me, normally plays in the centre or in the back row, but he went on the wing, so sometimes players are played out of position just as a way of getting them to learn.

“We will get them into their normal position, but sometimes half a game on the wing is better than no game at all.”