Furness Raiders coach David Cairns is still beaming with pride in his players after they held off a late fightback from Leeds City College to win 22-18, despite having a severely depleted squad.

The Raiders’ under-19 side had just 14 players for the trip to Yorkshire on Wednesday, but picked up one of their most notable victories of the season so far thanks to two tries apiece from Charlie Emslie and Shane Sanderson.

They were 22-6 up at one stage, but were hanging on by the end as fatigue set in, with Leeds able to interchange seven players from their bench and Furness just one.

It was a match where 16-year-olds Martin Brun and Rio McQuistan came of age, as they played the full 80 minutes in the back row, while Matthew Henderson, who normally features at hooker, filled in on the wing in the place of the ill Ryan Wilson.

They were without influential players such as Connor Terrill, Joe Crarey and Evan Jones, but the young Raiders were still able to get their 2020 off to a flyer.

Cairns said: “I don’t think we were that far off getting beat, to be honest with you. If that game had gone on for another couple of minutes, we might just have got beat just because of energy levels.

“It was the first game after Christmas and we travelled two-and-a-half hours on the bus, so I’ve never been more made up than that in any of the games we’ve had.

“We’ve hammered teams sometimes and we’ve said ‘that hasn’t done us any good,’ so it was so pleasing to see them lads dig in when there were lads injured, there were lads with cramp.

“I was so pleased with the character they showed. The two 16-year-olds in the back row played the full game and just kept banging the ball up and didn’t take a backwards step.”