Barrow Raiders sent out a message last night that they have arrived in earnest to contest the Betfred Championship.
A 34-24 win at Widnes Vikings, after going 12-0 behind inside 10 minutes, maintained their 100 per cent start following their League One title win last year.
It was a special night for coach Paul Crarey who had never won against Widnes on their home ground as a player or as a coach.
“We’ve a great group of players at the club and I think that showed we mean business. We do like the tag of underdogs, though, and it would be nice to stay under the radar as we go on through the season,” he said.
Afterwards the pundits argued that it was the best game of rugby league across all formats seen in Britain this year for the neutrals.
An excellent advert for the game of rugby league it had end to end action, a total of 10 tries scored, one or two of them controversial and others quite breath-taking.
On controversy, the main talking point was Barrow’s try to build on their 22-18 advantage just after the hour.
The referee and his tough judge saw nothing wrong when a pass from Jake Carter to Ryan Shaw was deemed to have drifted forward.
Shaw went on to find Shane Toal and the winger won the race to his own kick through before finding Carter inside him and Luke Cresswell was there to take the final pass and score a scintillating try.
Winger Tee Ritson (2), Jarrad Sammut (his first for the club), Carl Forster and man of the match Hakim Miloudi scored the other Barrow tries.
Shaw kicked four goals and Carter also put over one to complete a memorable night for the Raiders.
Next up is another televised game against county rivals Workington Town in the Challenge Cup on Sunday (ko 1pm).
The fact that Barrow have just won at Widnes, where Town conceded 70 points last month, won’t affect Crarey’s approach to the game
