Barrow Raiders will be up against one of their fellow Betfred League One sides in tomorrow’s pre-season friendly against North Wales Crusaders and head coach Paul Crarey is expecting a more open game than last week.

A powerful Oldham side held off a brave fightback from the Raiders in winning 22-18 at Craven Park in what was the first tune-up ahead of the 2020 season.

Considering how Crarey was without several key players for that game, as well as seven out of the 21-man squad were amateur players, it was a good first effort from the home side, who will be expected to build on that against the Crusaders.

The Wrexham-based side finished seventh in the third tier last season and Crarey is hoping their open style of play - and the conditions - will allow his backline greater freedom to build combinations.

He said: “We’re looking forward to North Wales, who play some great football under Anthony Murray. They probably won’t wrestle as well as Oldham because they haven’t got that full-time environment, a little like ourselves.

“They’ve got some amateur players and some pros - Karl Ashall is a great little player, very smart, and then you’ve got Brad Brennan, who’s a handful off your goal line, and a centre who nearly signed here.

“Again, it’s a little bit different to Oldham, they won’t be as physical but they’ll play some decent football and probably won’t be as conservative as Oldham - that’s a threat in itself, if teams are prepared to throw the ball around.

“I’m just hoping for some good weather because I think the weather spoiled the game a bit on Sunday and turned it into a forwards battle, which we didn’t want, we just wanted to show our wares and we learned a lot about ourselves as a team.”

What Crarey wants to see from his team against North Wales is for them to play with a bit more width and give the likes of Tee Ritson, Adam Ford and Luke Cresswell more to work with in attack than they had against Oldham.

“Looking at the tape, we played really narrow,” Crarey said. “We probably should have won the game - even Jake [Carter] admits that he should have scored at the end, which is fair enough.

“But they had a couple of chances on the left edge, where we weren’t numbered up properly,, where they bombed them as well, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

“All in all, I thought we were really good to not get blown away by a Championship team that was predominantly at full strength.

“There were a couple of tries where we were measured and nobody laid a hand on our guys when they went over, but we missed two one-on-one tackles and one where Carl McBain didn’t get off his goal line.

“There was a lot of good stuff, but a lot we’ve got to work on. I thought we played narrow in our half and we lost our left edge, shape-wise.”