T'Other Side: Barrow Raiders

    

Head Coach: Paul Crarey

Paul Crarey has been Barrow’s head coach ever since 2015. In the Championship only Mark Aston at Sheffield has been head coach at a club for longer. He was also Barrow’s head coach from 2006 to 2007.

He had a short spell as Whitehaven’s head coach at the beginning of the 2008 but left in March of that year as a result of illness.

In his playing days he was a hooker and made over 170 appearances for Barrow as well as playing for Carlisle.

In 1992 he was hooker in the Cumbria side who played Australia in a warm-up match for that year’s World Cup.

 

Captain: Jarrad Stack

 

Australian second rower, Jarrad Stack, has been the Barrow captain since 2020. He arrived in the UK in 2009 to join Workington from Melbourne Storm at the age of 20. He then moved to Barrow in 2017.

He has played 343 games in the UK (171 for Workington and 172 for Barrow) and scored 116 tries (62 for Workington and 54 for Barrow).

 

Loan players and Dual Registration

On April 30th Barrow signed a dual registration agreement with Wigan Warriors that has already seen Ryan Brown (loose forward), Jacob Douglas (wing), Tom Forber (hooker) and Harvey Makin (prop) playing for them.

Prior to the dual reg agreement they had already had Finley Beardsworth (second row), Tom Forber and Harvey Makin on loan from Wigan. Kavan Rothwell (prop) has been on loan from Leigh Leopards.

Both Harvey Makin and Kavan Rothwell also had loan spells at Barrow in 2023. At that time Rothwell was a Wigan player.

 

The Fev connection

 

There are no players in the 2024 Featherstone Rovers squad who have previously played for Barrow Raiders.

 

For geographical reasons only 21 players have played for both Fev and Barrow. A big difference to last week when we listed 136 players who had played for both Fev and Dewsbury.

 

David Heselwood was a centre who began as a rugby union player. He had already played for the England U23 rugby union side before he signed for Leeds rugby league team in 1984. After just 6 appearances for Leeds he joined Barrow in mid-season and over the latter part of 1984-85 and the earlier part of 1985-86 at Barrow he played for them 36 times and scored 8 tries. However, being a Leeds based player, he found the travelling to Barrow very difficult and in January 1986 he transferred to Featherstone. Sadly, his playing career ended at the age of 28, as a result of a serious knee injury. For Fev he played 28 times and scored 3 tries.

 

Frédéric (Freddie) Zitter joined Fev in May of 2004 from Limoux at the end of the French Elite Championship season. He had previously played for Lézignan. He played for Fev, primarily as a centre but occasionally as a winger, for the rest of the 2004 season making 19 appearances and scoring 8 tries. Whilst at Rovers he played for France and scored two tries against Australia in a high scoring test match played in Toulouse which Australia won 52-30. In 2005 he joined Barrow where he played 25 times and scored 14 tries.

After his year at Barrow he returned to France with Catalans Dragons and later played two seasons each for Lyons and Montpellier.

Audrey Zitter (Freddie’s wife) became the first woman to coach a men’s professional rugby league team which she did at Montpellier from 2013 to 2016.