PAUL Crarey wants to see a smarter approach from Barrow Raiders when they head to York City Knights in the Betfred Championship this Sunday.

The Raiders were unable to build on an impressive win away to Batley Bulldogs in the opening game of the season, being edged out 24-22 at home to Sheffield Eagles last weekend.

The visitors won the match on the last play of the game when Patrick Walker kicked a goal following a contentious penalty award and while Barrow head coach Crarey was annoyed by that decision, he conceded his side committed too many other technical infringements.

He is keen to tighten up defensively too ahead of the match at York, who came back from 16 points down to win at Dewsbury Rams last Sunday.

“Now is the time to dig deep,” said Crarey. “There are no easy games in this division and you’ve got to fight for everything.

“That was a big win for York away to Dewsbury, so we’ve got to tighten our belts and be a little bit smart. Technical penalties are killing us at the moment.

“I thought our line-speed was slow that isolated our markers and got us one-on-ones with their ball-carrier through the middle, but York play a bit of structure football, so hopefully we can defend that.”

Although there were a total of 23 penalties awarded in the clash with Sheffield, it was not a dirty game with most awarded for technical offences around the ruck and for being offside rather than foul play.

Both sides recorded high completion rates too, with Sheffield’s in the high 70s and Barrow at around 86 per cent – something which Crarey was encouraged by.

There were plenty of bright spots to build for the Raiders as well, particularly the period at the start of the second half where the home side capitalised on the Eagles fumbling the restart to take the lead.

However, there were several lapses after that which Crarey wants to fix up and will be having the side focussing on in training this week.

“We talked about controlling the game and getting it back into our control, and we did that but then lost it again,” said Crarey.

“What they do very well is burn the rucks, push hard and they’re very narrow, and we’ve got to get tight our A, B and C defenders, and have pure line-speed there and your markers over an arm’s length so everyone can be active.

“Neither team left anything in back in the changing room. I thought it was high tempo and high quality – the completion rate tells you that.

“But the penalty count just killed both teams at the back end of sets and put us both on the back foot.”

Barrow will make the trip to York without stand-off Jamie Dallimore, who begins his two-match suspension for dangerous contact this weekend.

That means rookie half-back Jake Carter is likely to feature again after coming off the interchange bench for his competitive Raiders debut against Sheffield.

Should Nathan Mossop return from injury to back up hooker Wartovo Puara Jr, that would free up Lewis Charnock to play the full game in the halves rather than switch to nine as in recent weeks.