Pirates focused on putting heavy loss behind them

Cornish Pirates joint-head coach Gavin Cattle says his side are focused on putting their 73-40 loss at Coventry behind them.

Coventry scored 11 tries as Pirates suffered one of their heaviest defeats in a Champ fixture.

The loss came a week after an impressive opening weekend win over Doncaster at the Mennaye Field.

"The boys are motivated, you don't become a bad team overnight," Cattle told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"When you win you think you're better than you are and when you lose you think you're worse than you are.

"So it's just a bit of a reality check to focus on what we're doing, what we've been doing in training and let's get some transfer."

Pirates' campaign does not get any easier as they host last season's table-toppers Ealing on Saturday.

Cattle feels that the heavy scoreline did not tell the whole story of his side, who conceded almost half of their points in a 15-minuyte spell around two yellow cards.

They had injury problems in the warm-up and still scored six tries at a side that finished third last season and made the play-off semi-finals.

"You can see the 70 points, obviously something drastically has gone wrong," he added.

"I think the pivotal point was the second yellow card, going down to 13 men.

"I'm not one to go down the referee route, but I can't see why that was a yellow card in my eyes and I think that was a real pivotal point, especially when we had a lot of late change in the backline.

"We conceded 30 points in that period. Could we have managed it better? There's definitely some learning there, but when we had 15 men on the pitch, not only were we competitive, we looked in patches very good."

It means there will be a motivated Cornish Pirates side that host an Ealing team that have not lost a regular-season game since April 2025.

"There's a lot of boys who want to put things right," added Cattle.

"Coaches, players, we all want to put our best foot forward and try and emulate the performance we put against Doncaster.

"This is a chance to get more cohesive, build different combinations.

"Is it going to be polished? I doubt it, but is it going to be full of heart, emotion, want to put things right? That gives you a lot on a day and I think you'll see a good response from our lads."