Cornish Pirates boss Ian Davies proud of players after narrow defeat at Bristol

Cornish Pirates were thrashed 40-10 in the reverse fixture at home to Bristol

Cornish Pirates head coach Ian Davies said he was proud of his side as they took two losing bonus points from a narrow 29-24 defeat at leaders Bristol.

Brett Beukeboom, Tom Duncan, Craig Holland and Kyle Moyle went over for Pirates, who had made 14 changes.

"You look at their internationals - no-one should be anywhere near them, but rugby's a funny old game," Davies said.

"We had belief the team we picked would score and we knew, to win, we probably needed five tries - we've scored four."

Bristol are 10 points clear at the top and have lost just two league games all season.

Pirates are still yet to win at Bristol since the Championship was formed and have now lost four games in a row.

"Sean Holley (Bristol first-team coach) said to me before the game 'What are you doing?', and I said 'We're going to give you some problems', and we did that," added Davies to BBC Radio Cornwall.

"Some of these guys have jumped ahead of those who some people would say are first choice - from this performance a few of these guys will be playing against Doncaster next weekend.

"Hopefully we can get a few names on dotted lines on contracts coming this week. We'll hopefully be able to announce five or six guys this week and everything's looking good."

Meanwhile, the club have confirmed Chilean international prop forward Francisco Deformes has been released from his contract.