Barrow Raiders’ pre-season training has gone more smoothly than last year, but there have still been a couple of issues that head coach Paul Crarey has had to deal with during the last month.

Crarey was thankful to be in the position where the vast majority of his squad was able to get straight back into it when they reconvened at Craven Park on November 9.

That was in contrast to 12 months ago, when the multitude of injuries suffered during the 2018 season meant players were at different stages of their recoveries and had to play catch-up further down the line.

There have been a couple of setbacks to captain Jarrad Stack and vice-captain Nathan Mossop recently, but they thankfully shouldn’t affect their preparation for next year’s campaign in Betfred League One too adversely.

Crarey said: “We’ve been going really well, overall. Shane Toal has done really well to get back and he’s been up there with the front runners, so I’ve been very impressed with how he’s going.

“We’ve had a bit of a blip with Mossy because he had a bit of a floating bone in his shoulder, so he’s had to have a minor operation, which has put him two or three weeks away from any contact, but apart from that he’s doing great.

“Jarrad has got an infection in his elbow which put him in hospital, so he’s been on a drip and antibiotics. He’s actually out of hospital now, but we admitted him straight in when the physio thought it looked infected.

“He only came out on Monday from last Thursday, it was a bit of a shock, but he’s OK now. The infection is still there, but they’ve got it under control for the moment, so we’re just hoping that clears up.”

One of the more infamous parts of Barrow’s pre-season regime took place last week when their squad took on the dunes at Roanhead to build up their strength and fitness ahead of the new season.

They were joined by the amateur players earmarked for dual registration deals and some of the youngsters who compete with the Furness Raiders under-19 side.

Crarey said: “I think they were outstanding - we probably changed the format a little bit, where there was one section you had to get round in under four minutes and the lads enjoyed that one. Then last week, we did a section that takes you one minute 30 [seconds] to do and lot of the lads were making the times.

“We actually came off the dunes and did a field session and the lads were flying.

“We’ve done a lot of injury prevention stuff this year, with of lot of stretches in the build-up to our sessions. It’s been really good and I’ve been speaking to a lot of the lads, who’ve said they’re really enjoying it.”