LEWIS Charnock believes Barrow Raiders are facing one of their hardest away matches of the season when they head to York City Knights in the Betfred Championship tomorrow.

The Raiders have already secured an impressive win on the road this year, chalking up a rare away victory at Batley Bulldogs on the opening weekend of the season.

But having seen the League One champions hold full-time promotion favourites Toronto Wolfpack to just 14 points at Bootham Crescent and then come from behind to win away to Dewsbury Rams last weekend, Barrow scrum-half Charnock is expecting a hard examination.

“They’re newly promoted and they want to try to prove themselves in the league, which everybody does,” said Charnock. “York is probably one of the toughest places - including Batley - to go.

“They put up a good game against Toronto in the first week, only being beaten 14-0, which with the side Toronto have got not many teams will come that close this year. Then they came back from 16-0 down to beat Dewsbury last week.

“Getting beaten in the first game isn’t the best, but they’ve had two half-decent results so they’ll be on a bit of a high.

“Obviously they’ll be watching videos of us and we weren’t at our best against Sheffield, so we do really need to play well this week and hopefully get the win.”

A 24-22 defeat at home to Sheffield Eagles last Sunday brought the Raiders back down to earth after the win at Batley.

But Charnock is in no doubt Barrow will show improvements in the coming weeks.

“We weren’t at our best, but we were still within two points and only got beaten on the buzzer from a very harsh penalty, so there’s still room for improvement,” said Charnock.

“It’s a positive that there’s a lot of improvement to come out of us. We’ve got 10 new players and we’re still getting used to our combinations, so give us time and it will come.”