Given the ongoing coronavirus pandemic it may not be long until Barrow Raiders have a break enforced upon them, but head coach Paul Crarey admits his team could have done without one over the past weekend.

The fifth round of the Coral Challenge Cup took place without Barrow, who were unfortunate to have been knocked out by Betfred Championship side Featherstone Rovers last month.

The performance at Post Office Road formed part of what was a pleasing first month of the season for the Raiders, who followed that up by defeating fellow promotion hopefuls Doncaster in League One and then breezing past Coventry in their first home fixture.

Crarey is hoping the weekend off won’t disrupt the momentum that has been gained, with his players, as things stand, targetting two wins on the road at North Wales Crusaders and Keighley Cougars in the next couple of weeks.

Crarey said: “We wanted to keep going, really. The league is stop-start, we know that and we’re not going to sit on our laurels and fall in love with ourselves.

“We work real hard and we’re going to keep it like that so we’re going to get weeks when we’ve got to remain focused.

“We’ve got two really difficult games coming up - we know how hard it is to go to Keighley and win from our last promotion season and North Wales have got some high-quality players and they’ve got some money in from somewhere.

“They also play on a very small field with a running track around it so everyone knows how difficult it is to win at them spots and it sometimes becomes a bit of a lottery if you don’t get protection [from referees] and be allowed to play quick.

“If we play slow, we become an ordinary team, like everybody else, so our goal this year is to play as quick as we can, for as long as we possibly can.”

Barrow showed how dangerous they can be at this level if they play with a good tempo when they ran in five tries in the first 22 minutes in their 50-6 thrashing of Coventry just over a week ago.

It also came when the weather was dry, albeit on a fairly boggy Craven Park pitch, which is potentially a good sign for when fields firm up in the summer.

Crarey said: “We’ll go to sport where it will be boggy with rain and we’ll have to adapt and grind, but if we get a chance to play quick then we’ll play quick and that’s how we train ourselves.

“Probably our worst performance was the first friendly against Oldham, where we got real narrow, we didn’t push and play and when the forwards went to the edges they looked to carry, rather than hold their width.

“Since then, we’ve got that under control and we’ve improved week in, week out.”