Paver sees improvements in Cornish Pirates cup loss

Cornish Pirates earned a try-scoring bonus point at Kingsholm

Cornish Pirates joint-head coach Alan Paver says his side can be proud after their 36-28 loss at Gloucester in the Premiership Rugby Cup.

Having conceded 10 tries to Gloucester's Premiership rivals Exeter last week, Pirates earning a try-scoring bonus point as Will Gibson, Josh King and two Sol Moody scores kept the tie competitive.

But it was still a sixth successive loss in all competitions for the Penzance club, who are bottom of their Premiership Rugby Cup pool after the opening two rounds of games.

"I think Gloucester's balance of the side, probably was about right for the competition and it gave us an opportunity to get out there and play some rugby," Paver told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"I thought it was very competitive from start to finish and our lads will be proud of what they have done out there.

"That said, there was a couple of errors within the game that we will be disappointed with and there's a lot of things there that we need to practise and need to keep working on."

Pirates face Championship rivals Hartpury in two weeks in their final game in the first block of cup fixtures.

Paver hopes the two weeks of training will help improve his side after their tough start to the season.

"We've identified three key areas that we want to be better at when we get out of this, a lot of it's based around set piece," he added.

"Never forget set-piece is king, you've got to be able to launch from line-out and a stable scrum.

"You've got to be able to pressure opposition line-out and scrum, and you've got to be able to nail the basics of your game - that could be your box exits, it can be other basic areas of your game.

"We've got to get better to in those key areas and we put a focus on it in training and hopefully when we get out of the next couple of weeks we'll be better again."

"After last week, which was a soul searching week for us, we just wanted to make sure that we could get the energy right, get on the pitch, and make sure that we can put a gritty performance in.

"We were in that game all the way through, it was just small little things, and at the end of the day it wasn't quite enough to get over the line."