Premiership Rugby Cup: Cornish Pirates boss Gavin Cattle satisfied with side despite Exeter loss

Ruaridh Dawson's sixth-minute try gave Cornish Pirates an early lead at Sandy Park

Cornish Pirates "gave a good account of themselves" in their 38-13 Premiership Rugby Cup loss at Exeter, says joint head coach Gavin Cattle.

The Pirates led 13-12 at half-time before losing Morgan Nelson to the sin-bin just after the break.

They conceded soon after as Exeter went on to score four unanswered tries.

"We came here wanting to put up a fight, give a good account of ourselves and I felt we did that in the first half," Cattle told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"We stayed in the fight second half, although we weren't accurate enough, but, all in all, I think it was a good exercise for us."

The win was a second successive defeat to a Premiership side for the Pirates in the cup this season.

The defeat, in Pirates' first competitive fixture at Sandy Park in almost 14 years, came a week after the Penzance-based club narrowly lost out to Bath at the Mennaye.

"You don't get anything for leading at half-time but I'm obviously proud of the lads for being in the fight," Cattle added.

"I would have liked us to have dealt with that first 10 minutes of the second half a lot differently.

"But we showed a lot of fight, we were in the contests and I think we forced errors on Exeter - and then they did that to us in the second half.

"There's little bits in our game we're going to have to iron out, but we knew that coming into this game - we're not polished by any stretch yet, so we'll just keep pushing those areas.

"The ingredients were there, they boys stepped up, they stayed in the fight and there's a lot from that game we can take."