Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey has credited strength and conditioning coach Paddy Maher for coming up with the training programmes that his players will be following while they train away from the club.

The Raiders’ squad will be maintaining their fitness at home or in the gym while the coronavirus outbreak prevents many rugby league teams from training together as a group.

At this moment in time, Crarey is preparing to face Workington Town on Good Friday (April 10) as normal, but for the time being he isn’t able to go through training drills with his players at Craven Park.

While they’ll be keeping themselves ticking over, there does still remain the worry that the players will lose the match sharpness they showed during what was a positive start to the season, but Maher’s up-to-date methods have the full backing of his boss.

Crarey said: “Paddy has downloaded an app and he’s sent it out to all the lads, who we expect to do four sessions a week while we’re planning on playing against Workington.

“Paddy is up-to-date with all the new stuff and he’s getting the players to log what they actually do and it shows up as to whether they’re actually doing it or not.

“We don’t want to let go of what we’ve started and what we’ve worked so hard to achieve so far and the lads are keen to do it as well, which is the main thing.

"We all need to be ready to go as soon as we do start again. I don’t know when that is and the longer this goes on, the more fitness the lads will lose without training as a group, but credit to Paddy, he’s on the ball and he’s got the stuff out there through our manager, Andy Gaffney.

“The lads download all the information and it’s fed back to Paddy, so we know who’s doing what, and it’s beyond me - I’m old-school - so credit to Paddy for putting it all together.”

Amongst the multitude of uncertainties in what lies ahead in the coming weeks is when Barrow’s players will be able to train as a group again.

Travel for the players who live outside of Cumbria always produces its own problems anyway and matters aren’t helped by there being a lack of viable alternatives when it comes to facilities.

Crarey said: “I spoke to Mark Campbell from Featherstone and they’re bringing their players, six at a time, into a barn that they’ve had cleansed and everything, and we can’t do any of that.

“I’ve spoken to Joe Bullock as well and they’re coming in at different times in small groups at Wigan and I’ve also spoken to my mate Richard Agar [at Leeds Rhinos] and they’re off for two weeks before they go into a mini pre-season, if that’s what it takes.

“But we’re the ones that are crossing our fingers and hoping that we’ll be back in sooner rather than later - the way it’s escalating, we don’t know when and it’s going to be lucky that some clubs survive this because it’s devastating to all sports."