Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey believes his players were able to record a 38-18 victory against London Skolars in the Coral Challenge Cup because they injected pace into what was a stop-start game.

The two sides belatedly got their seasons under way after Storm Ciara forced the tie to be postponed last week and it took a while for them to warm up on a heavy pitch, in windy conditions.

Earlier in the week, Crarey had mentioned how his team has only been able to pull away from the Skolars in the closing stages in the past and this was the case again at Craven Park.

There wasn’t much flow to the game for the most part, as the visitors dug in well, but once they tired Barrow were ultimately able to make sure of a fourth round tie at Featherstone Rovers with a win that wasn’t quite as comfortable as the scoreline suggests.

Crarey said: “I thought we stuck to it. There were spoiling tactics where we weren’t allowed to play, there were blokes lying all over the place and we just sent the message on that we’ve got to stay focused and still try and play quick and then we did that.

“We scored some nice tries, although I thought the rucks were real slow. We let in some soft tries, but you can’t criticise any of the players for playing in that lot, it was so difficult.

“We lost the toss and had to play into the wind and there was no way you could kick your way out - Jamie Dallimore kicked a drop-out in the second half that went fully 100 metres, we ended up getting a drop-out from them and we scored under the posts.

“That’s how horrendous the conditions were, so it was about getting through to the next round, but I thought we were real good even though we had to make a few changes.”