There’s no stopping Barrow at the moment as they saw off Bradford Bulls to climb to fifth in the Betfred Championship.
Paul Crarey’s side were too good for the visitors as they cemented a place in the play-offs at the end of the season.
They were being tipped by some pundits to go straight back down to League One after they had gone up as champions.
Some outstanding recruitment has strengthened what was a good League One side into what is a very good Championship squad – and squad is the operative word.
Crarey, a Barrow lad who has achieved cult status in his home town with the way he has directed operations and put the squad together, has also got them playing attractive rugby league.
Crarey said after the game: “We didn’t what team we were putting out until Saturday lunch-time because we had three players on antibiotics because of infections they had picked-up from grass burns last week.
“But I thought we did really well to beat a Bradford side who have some big middles and two smart half-backs. Our defence was tenacious and some smart play got us some good tries.
“We are up to fifth but have some tough games coming up and I just hope we can gather enough points to stay in the top six for the play-offs.”
It had taken only two minutes for Barrow to grab the lead with a try from top scorer Tee Ritson.
By half-time that had been extended to 18-0 with further tries from Jarrod Sammut and Ellis Gillam, with Ryan Shaw converting both and adding a penalty.
Bradford threatened a fight-back in the second-half when Kieran Gill went over in the corner for an unconverted try.
But they could not build on that against some outstanding Barrow defence and eventually the Raiders started to dominate again.
Luke Ctresswell dived over under the posts on 67 minutes for Shaw to convert and two minutes from time Ritson had a simple walk-in for his second try, converted by Shaw.
