Cornish Pirates 'sluggish' in 55-13 Bedford defeat

Alan Paver has seen Cornish pirates win six of their 13 Championship games so far this season.

Cornish Pirates joint-head coach Alan Paver has criticised his side after they were thrashed 55-13 at Bedford.

The Pirates, who went into the match having won back-to-back matches, conceded seven tries and did not score in the second half.

"I'm extremely disappointed," Paver told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"We thought we could put a performance in that would give us an opportunity of getting on the right side of the score, but early on we looked sluggish."

Pirates remain in seventh place in the Championship having won six of their 13 games so far this season.

Their preparation was hampered as bad weather meant they could not train in the week leading up to the match.

But Paver felt that despite his side's difficult build-up they should have performed better.

"Bedford came at us pretty hard, a couple of tries they scored early doors just looked like they walked through us, so we've got to look carefully at that," he said.

"But overall we got beat and beat well, and it's going to be a long trip home.

"They looked like they could penetrate us at will at times, and even though we were going through the phases we didn't really have enough penetration and enough firepower to put them in any kind of danger.

"We just looked at times a bit one dimensional, our set piece didn't really factor, and we got beat fair and square by a far superior side."