Barrow Raiders head coach Paul Crarey was at a loss when it came to explaining how the Betfred Super League has set a return date when the same can't be said for the Championship or League One.

It was announced on Friday that the top flight will come back with a trio of fixtures on August 2, which will be be the first rugby league fixtures in this country to take place since March 15.

However, the clubs in the two professional leagues below were kept waiting after a video conference last Thursday came to a conclusion without anything decisive emerging from it.

This was to the frustration of the Raiders, who wish the 2020 campaign to be concluded following the coronavirus pandemic and wanted a 'roadmap' as to how it could be restarted to come out of it.

Crarey said: "We just want to get back playing again and we're all under one governing body (the RFL).

"I feel like there should be a start date for everybody, as in the same day the Super League starts is the day we should be starting. I can't see any reason why we can't start.

"We need a day we can all look forward to and plan for, but we can't plan anything at the moment - we don't know when we can train, we don't know when our fixtures are.

"We need something in place that we can work towards and find a way to do it, rather than find a way not to do it, even if we've got to play behind closed doors for a few weeks."

One of the barriers to getting the season going again is the opposition of some clubs to playing without crowds, but Crarey believes not playing at all would do a lot more harm to the game in this country.

He said: "We need to get the game going again, otherwise we're going to lose some clubs and players are going to be lost to the game.

"There are a lot of things that need to be sorted out, but we just need somebody to say 'this is the day you're going to start and this is when you can train.

"We need to put things in place to get up to that date and if anything changes because things are changing weekly at the moment - you look at people on the beaches and the Liverpool fans out celebrating and there's a lot of social distancing gone out the window.

"Our ground is big enough for us, with social distancing, to play with a crowd."