Barrow Raiders head coach ‘claim’

The BARROW Raiders fell 38-28 against the Halifax Panthers at home, and head coach Paul Crarey believed his team was responsible for their own demise.

Before the Panthers rallied late to win it, Crarey believed the Raiders should have already eliminated the opposition.

“It was unbelievable,” he stated, discussing the outcome and performance on the club’s official Facebook page.

“We lost control of the game and panicked in some circumstances, even though we were leading 28 points to 12.

“Even with seven minutes remaining, we led by six points. We had the opportunity to score a goal to make it seven and break the game’s momentum, but we chose not to. In a way, it would have been mentally taxing for them.

In the second half, we made a few attempts to reinvent the wheel.

“The first half was excellent, in my opinion. superior on both counts. We lost one set and were about 90% of the way there.

“They were at 86% or so, and I told the Raiders players at halftime that unless we drop off ourselves, this won’t drop off, and I just don’t think we managed the game.”

Crarey couldn’t contain his dissatisfaction at the Raiders’ failure to return to their core principles and thinks they gave the visitors the momentum and eventual victory.

“Even with two minutes to go, we had set there,” he continued. After putting in a lot of effort and winning the ball back, we lost patience on play two and threw an intercept, which ended the game.

“It’s about man-managing the game, box-kicking, which we didn’t do much of in the latter stages of the match, and Halifax took the lead throughout.”

They appeared to have grown another leg, and one particularly disappointing attempt had a player who stayed beyond our tryline for what seemed like an age. After being delayed, he drops the ball. Since there is no movement moving forward and it felt like a lifetime until he dropped the ball down to take the lead, perhaps it should have been termed held early.

“I’m quite unhappy for both the fans and myself because, in reality, we actually got away with our own foolishness.

“I simply believed that they had a man who was sin-binned, and that we ought to have executed them instead of putting the cue on display.

“It’s a little raw with me right now because I just thought we were in control of that game and probably a six or seven minute has cost us,” the player said. “It was just the manner of defeat when it was totally in the bag.”