BARROW Raiders' head coach Paul Crarey has admitted his side could suffer from injuries during their Challenge Cup tie against Oldham later this month.

Crarey’s team are heading into their first-round tie at the Vestacare Stadium on March 20 without an ideal pre-season schedule, as the Raiders will be playing no friendlies before facing the Championship side.

Although the side have come back to pre-season training in a good physical condition, Crarey said the club have taken steps to preserve the players’ fitness.

He said: “It is nearly a year since we played.

“We’re going into the first game against Oldham cold.

“We were thinking about having a friendly but our league season is quite a long way off after the Challenge Cup first round, so we have opted not to have the friendly and go into the game cold.

“We don’t know what to expect – we have put a lot of injury prevention measures in place and worked with our conditioning coach Paddy, hoping that we get through the game relatively clean.

“We have just done a lot of aerobic stuff and contact and the new rules might catch us cold.

“We don’t know what to expect but we have done our best to prepare for the Oldham game.”

Captain Jarred Stack has echoed his head coach’s words and is expecting the first game back to be a shock to the system.

He commented: “The only thing I am worried about is the contact.

“We obviously haven’t been able to do much training and play any friendlies so we’re going into the game against Oldham cold.

“I think the contact is the big thing and not being able to do weights. We can run all we want and get as fit as possible, but without weights and contact it doesn’t mean much.

“The first game is definitely going to have an effect on the body of all our players, old and young, but we will be fit and ready for the game.”

The Roughyeds fixture could see Adam Walne make his Raiders debut since leaving Super League’s Huddersfield Giants last year. He has now reunited with his brother Jordan at Craven Park.

The prop has been impressive during training, Crarey revealed.

In particular, Crarey has singled out Adam Walne’s attitude and believe he has added to the Raiders’ camaraderie.

Crarey noted: “I have been very impressed with all lads when they came back to training.

“They are all in good condition and their attitudes are brilliant. There is that togetherness in the group.

"This group is pretty special. We are looking forward to going. We have a really close bond with the players and anybody that doesn’t fit in our system, we show them the door after 12 months.

“I have been impressed with Adam Walne and his attitude since he joined. Players like Jarred speak for themselves – they are examples for the team in how they presents themselves. The new players like Ben Harrison are easy to work in and train really hard, too.”