Paul Crarey is closing in on a coaching record at Barrow Raiders and he has become an integral part of the club’s survival and success over the past ten years, writes MARC BAZELEY.
FEW people would see swimming with sharks as the perfect way to unwind at the end of a long and gruelling rugby league season, but for Barrow Raiders’ long-serving head coach Paul Crarey it proved exactly that.
Barely a week after concluding his tenth season at the helm of his hometown club, which he represented with distinction in his playing days as well, the 58-year-old was on the plane to Egypt for a week where he spent time diving and getting up close to the creatures which lie beneath the sea.
After a nerve-wracking year in which the Raiders’ Championship status was secured for a fourth-straight season despite a 26-24 defeat at home to Widnes Vikings in the final round of matches, “It becomes easier diving with sharks than coaching,” Crarey told Rugby League World.
Make no mistake though, the former Barrow hooker loves his job. He would not have spent a decade in what was initially meant to be a short-term return to Craven Park just to help stabilise the club for a season if he did not.
After hanging up his boots following a playing career which saw him make over 200 professional appearances between 1987 and 1995 in two spells with Barrow plus stints with fellow Cumbrian clubs Whitehaven and the now-defunct Carlisle, Crarey followed the well-trodden path into coaching.
His first spell in charge of the Raiders during the 2006 and 2007 seasons ended acrimoniously when he resigned in disagreement at off-field matters, and he may well have thought his time coaching in the professional game was over when he was hospitalised the following year after a health scare just months after taking the top job up the Cumbria coast at Whitehaven.
Following his recovery, Crarey returned to his roots as head coach of his former amateur club Dalton and oversaw sustained success with the team, earning the right to lead the BARLA Great Britain team and Cumbria’s county squad on the back of that.
It was perhaps no surprise, therefore, that then-chairman David Sharpe turned to Crarey when the Raiders needed a new coach to help rebuild following relegation from the Championship and Bobbie Goulding’s departure at the end of the 2014 campaign.
Crarey admitted he had reservations about stepping back into the professional ranks, yet accepting Sharpe’s offer has proven to be one of the best decisions he ever made.
“I left in bad circumstances the first time when I resigned because I didn’t agree with what was going on and I was right to leave because of what happened after I did,” Crarey said.
“I was a bit reluctant at first and Julie, my wife, convinced me to have another go. I went back in and ten years have absolutely flown by.
“I was probably reluctant to come back because of the way it ended last time but they were different people, they were honest people, and I had a great meeting with David and decided to give it a go. I don’t think I’ve regretted one second.”
It is rare in any sport that the head coach lasts longer than the chairman, but Crarey has been there through Sharpe’s two stints at the helm, plus those of Mike Sunderland, Allan Park and now one of his former Barrow team-mates, Steve Neale.
To emphasise his longevity further, of his contemporaries who began the 2024 season in charge of one of the 34 other professional clubs, only fellow Championship bosses Sylvain Houles at Toulouse Olympique (12th season) and Mark Aston at Sheffield Eagles (18th season) had been in position longer.
It goes without saying results on the field have played a big part in that. Notable successes include Barrow’s 2017 League One Cup triumph, promotion to the Championship in the same season and again in 2021 after suffering relegation pre-pandemic, plus a surprise fourth-place finish in the second tier in 2022.
What Crarey is proudest of, though, is rebuilding links between South Cumbria’s amateur clubs and the professional side, and re-establishing a pathway for talented young players in the area via the Furness Raiders team which plays in the college league.
“It’s not about winning and losing, as far as I’m concerned, it’s about holding the place together at times and sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do,” Crarey said.
“That’s what we’ve got to do to be sustainable. We’ve got to have people coming down the motorway, but we’ve got to produce our own players.
“It was a process we put in place and we’ve had over 180 kids on our development programme, and we’re running ‘coaching the coaches’ programmes which are well attended.
“We’ve got fantastic links with the amateur game, I know all of the coaches and they ask me for stuff, and I’ve got a great supply of information from the NRL and Super League.”
Crarey is grateful to the support of people like Rod Reddy, who he played alongside during the former Australia international’s time as player-coach at Barrow and who continues to serve as something of a mentor for him.
But he knows continuing to put in the long hours demanded even as coach of a part-time team would not be tenable without the support of his family or his business partner in his day-job as a plasterer and roofer.
“Without Julie and the support of my kids, who have been unbelievable, it wouldn’t be possible,” Crarey, who estimates he has just one night off a week, said.
“I run a business with my business partner and he’s understanding. We sometimes work around the training nights, having to finish early, so we work around that and it’s been difficult at times.
“We’re a big part of what we do with the youth as well, so it’s difficult and without the support of your family you’ve got no chance.”
It is not just Barrow where Crarey is highly regarded. Salford Red Devils boss Paul Rowley has extended job offers to him, while Richard Agar, who Crarey remains in close contact with, wanted him to join him when he was in charge at Wakefield Trinity.
So far, however, family and business demands, not to mention his love of Barrow and Cumbrian rugby league as a whole, have kept him close to home and he is closing in on Frank Foster’s record of 345 games as the club’s head coach.
A possibly apocryphal story is the only reason Foster, regarded as one of the hardest men ever to play rugby league, remained in position so long was because the board were too scared to sack him.
Crarey, on the other hand, seems to have the job for as long as he wants it and with 314 games at the helm of the Raiders already under his belt, has his sights set on passing the former Great Britain international’s mark going into the 2025 season.
“It’s something I never thought about at the start, but I want to get to that now,” Crarey said. “It’s my goal to get to that, and we’ll see what happens after that.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 503 (December 2024)
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