RSN

26 - 4 at HT and scraped a win 27-20. Due to a medical emergency half time was 45 mins. Dewsbury came into the second half fired up and we made a lot of errors second half which brought them back into the game. Emslie had his best game in a Barrow shirt and thoroughly deserved man of the match.

Agree with this. Having Clarke in second row is handy as he can fill in at centre if we get an injury in outside backs. I'd also prefer Wood and Forber to rotate one more time if subs allow it. Wood does first 20 mins of each half to take sting out of the game and Forber to finish the halves when the game opens up.

Did nout? He literally won us the game.

Only thing he really did wrong was put a kick out on the full and a couple of stray passes. Our attack was clunky but that wasn't purely down to him. There was 7 minutes left, he put a superb grubber through 60m from their try line which put Johnston through, 2 play the balls later we score. He then 1 minute to go he nails a drop goal to win us the game. Don't get the negativity, try assist wise in all the games including pre season he's created the most by a mile. Can't understand the target which has been put on his back by some fans.

Raiders edge York 15 - 14. 2 good sides on paper but you could tell both had lost their opening fixtures. York were winning 14 - 8 with 7 minutes to go so nail biting finish.

14 - 8 down with 7 minutes to go and we end up winning 15 - 14. Doesn't matter how it happened but we got the points and hopefully gives us a confidence boost into 2 winnable games.

Ryan plays his best rugby when he is calm, measured and sticks to a basic game plan. I feel every time he has a run of good games he gets over confident and tries too hard to make things happen which leads to mistakes. Best game I saw him play was Bradford away last year. He didn't do a lot apart from direct the team round and kick them to death which won us the game.

There's basic improvements to start winning games, we shown we could beat Haven away in the 1895 cup. Long way to go, it's not panic stations.

Missed that from my post, absolutely brain dead.

Got beaten by the basics of rugby league today. Haven completed better, less errors and better discipline. Their first 3 tries came from having a kick charged down, not kicking a penalty into touch and knocking in our own half. We also did 3 incorrect play the balls in one game which must be a record for semi professional football. Whitehaven did the basics well and deserved their win.

Looks like Tom Forber will be on the bench as signed on loan from Wigan, he's a really good hooker.

Hopefully team is: Cresswell Shaw Costello Toal Bulman Walker Johnston Walker Wood Silva Stack Greenwood Wilkinson Emslie Rothwell Clarke Jackson I'm guessing Smith and Burke won't be fit after last week. Bulman appears to be training so hopefully he is fit. Jackson for cover on the bench for hooker and halves. Who was the lad who came on at prop against Wakefield? He looked quite a handful. Maybe tempted to put him on the bench for a bit of size. Game will be won up the middle Friday. Forecast a lot of rain so it's going to be a tough one.

Barrow were missing a lot of strike players. 2 top try scorers from last season Broadbent and Bulman were unavailable which meant putting a dual reg amateur on the wing (he did score twice to be fair). We were also missing Stack and Greenwood who score a lot of tries from second row. Harvey Makin (young prop) played 60 minutes at second row when Charlie Emslie got injured. Wakefield looked well drilled and organized on their line but it will be interesting to see if their line holds against better back lines. If they can then they will be very formidable. I'm a big fan of Wakefield pitch also. I've seen games across all levels (particularly super league) and think they have been a worse quality due to the pitch being too heavy but we managed to see some good fast rugby yesterday.

Wakefield came out at a ridiculous pace to go 12-0 but after that their forwards seemed to tire a bit and Barrow competed very well and controlled a lot of game particularly in the second half. Wakefield had significantly better players in their spine and out wide hence were always a threat but Barrows scramble defence was very good. Barrow fans have come away pretty happy. I genuinely think our side is going under the radar this year particularly in the pack.

Beaten 30 - 12. We had a shocking first 5 minutes going down 12-0 but we competed with Wakefield for a good 75 minutes and had periods of dominance. Pack was outstanding and kicking in the second half was superb along with our defence. We have a good side here, there was a lot to like about today's performance.