With just under two weeks to go until their first friendly, Barrow Raiders have continued to vary up their pre-season schedule after training at Barrow ABC on Monday night.

The squad headed to Jeff Moses' gym on Brook Street as they continued to build up their fitness ahead of welcoming Oldham to Craven Park on Sunday, January 5 for the first of three friendlies they've got planned.

Moses, who helped develop the careers of professional fighters Liam Conroy, Mike McGoldrick and Ross Cooksey, also put the players through their paces with a variety of exercises, which included sparring sessions in the ring and a tug of war.

Head coach Paul Crarey said: "We've mixed it up lately, with different venues and different styles of training and the lads like going to Jeff's gym.

"It was a good, intense one-hour session and we're now going to be giving the lads a few days off before they're back in on Saturday and after that, again we've got conditioning and structure.

"We'll then be building up to the Oldham game, which probably comes a bit soon for everybody, really, but it's better than a training session and it gives everyone a little look at where we are and what we're doing in terms of what we need to carry on doing and what we need to improve on.

"Everyone is starting to get a bit twitchy, especially the travelling boys, because there's a lot of hard work coming up here for training and there's a bit of relief in playing that first game."

The dunes at Roanhead have been used to help get the players up to speed, although the recent wet weather has prevented them from challenging themselves up the hill to the cenotaph at Barrow Park.

Crarey said: "The weather has been pretty bad and it's been a bit icy on the tarmac, so we haven't really gone near that. We've skirted around that and we've done more hills up the sand dunes and we've changed the structure around there up to a longer session.

"We did more boxing last year than we're going to do this year, but it's always good to put in a good core session before Christmas and we're back in on Saturday, which will probably be a bruising session.

"We're then going to have a family get-together after training for the players, the board and a select few we've invited to come into our group."