Cougars told to tighten up goal-line defence after opening defeat at Barrow

CRAIG Lingard was left frustrated by his side’s line defence after defeat in their first outing of 2018 at familiar foes Barrow.

Despite an encouraging performance by the new-look Cougars, they still shipped eight tries as they fell to a fifth loss in 12 months at Craven Park.

“I’m not one of these coaches who will come out with how we’ll take the positives. I look at the negatives and how we can improve,” said head coach Lingard.

“Our goal-line defence was not good enough. We’ve prided ourselves throughout pre-season about working really hard on goal-line defence and bashing each other about but we didn’t bash Barrow.

“We conceded really soft tries, whether it is people missing one-on-one challenges or just being lazy in defence, and when I look back at the video, I will be identifying people who were missing tackles and not working hard enough.

“You can’t play a game of rugby with just the ball in your hand. Half the game is defence and if people don’t want to defend then they won’t be in my team, it’s as simple as that.”

Cougars had the first opportunity but Adam Ryder knocked on just metres from the line but it would be the home side who broke the deadlock when, from dummy half, Nathan Mossop weaved through and put Joe Bullock in underneath the posts.

Keighley thought they had drawn level when Liam Senior charged down a Jamie Dallimore kick before kicking it on himself in goal but Ryder failed to ground the ball.

The visitors were punished once more as Declan Hulme broke the Keighley line and linked up with Ryan Johnston to send Luke Cresswell racing over.

Cougars finally breached the Raiders line as Cresswell missed a tackle on Harry Aaronson, who punished his opposite number by scoring from 30 metres.

The visitors were now in the ascendency and came close to levelling the score but Hamish Barnes couldn’t get close enough to Lewis Fairhurst’s grubber.

Lingard will have been pleased though as his side closed the margin to two points. Fairhurst broke the Barrow line and touched down despite the interests of Cresswell.

Raiders quickly restored their advantage though when Jarrad Stack and Dan Toal linked up and the latter dived over.

The half finished on a sour note as Barrow were prevented from taking a quick tap restart, resulting in a punch-up close to the line that resulted in Raiders winger Brett Carter being sent to the sin-bin.

The Raiders scored the first points of the second half when they exposed Keighley’s right edge defence for Hulme to score.

Mossop extended the Barrow lead minutes later as he weaved his way underneath the uprights after the Cougars prevented Alec Susino finding the try-line.

Keighley wouldn’t go down without a fight and Cameron Leeming showed their battling spirit as, with great determination, he fended off two would-be tacklers to fight his way over the line.

Raiders' experience came to the fore as the game entered its latter stages, Tom Walker sidestepping a Cougars defender to add his name to the scoresheet.

Keighley kept fighting though and, after keeping the ball alive, they exposed a rare Barrow defensive lapse for Ryder to dive over.

Raiders responded again, keeping the ball alive for Cresswell to double his tally.

Toal then registered his second try three minutes from time as he broke through a tired Keighley defensive line.