Cornish Pirates 'nowhere near where we want to be' after Caldy loss

Alan Paver's side have won four of their nine league games this season

Cornish Pirates joint-head coach Alan Paver says his side must improve after they threw away a 14-3 lead to lose 15-14 at Caldy in the Championship.

Tries from Ruaridh Dawson and Shae Tucker saw the Pirates lead by 11 points at the half time interval.

But tries from Nick Royle and Michael Cartmell, along with an Elliot Gourlay penalty, saw the Wirral-based side win in the first meeting of the clubs.

"We are nowhere near where we want to be," Paver told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"We understand where we want to go and we keep working towards it."

The loss, a week after the Pirates saw a first-half lead slip away to leaders Ealing, sees the Penzance-based club drop to eighth place in the Championship.

"For 40 minutes we looked really in control - our field position was good, our set piece was working well," Paver said.

"Then it's almost like a carbon copy of last week, we lost momentum in the second half and we couldn't regain it.

"The guys are bitterly disappointed, as we are as coaches, but I think Caldy deserved their win."

He added: "Normally our lineout's the strongest aspect of our game, it didn't really function to a high level this week, so we couldn't really control the ball.

"When we got stuck into the kicking game in the second half there was a couple of times where we needed to diffuse some of the aerial stuff and we were unable to."