Cornish Pirates

CORNISH Pirates coach Jim McKay slammed his side’s showing as “totally unacceptable” after they crashed 23-16 at home to Exeter Chiefs on Sunday.

The Australian was less than impressed by his side’s second successive league defeat after the Pirates went down 41-7 at Rotherham the week previous. He said: “Full credit to Exeter because they deserved to win today. That said, we underperformed in lots of areas today and the performance was totally unacceptable.

“Our first half display was probably our worse of the season, but we came back well in the second half and got the scores level at 16-all. Sadly, though, we did not have the noose to score again, which is disappointing.”

With second-placed Bedford next up, McKay knows his side must get back on track as soon as possible. He added: “It’s the first time we’ve lost at home this season, so we’re pretty upset about that. The one positive today was perhaps our scrum, but it’s not rocket science, we know we have to work harder if we want to get things out of a game.”

Meanwhile, Exeter Chiefs coach Rob Baxter hailed his side’s character and commitment after the game. He said: “At the end of the day you’ve got to look at a set of guys who wanted to go out onto the pitch and set the record straight.

We talked about it a lot during the week and put a sign on the dressing room wall that said ‘43-16. Unfinished business.’ “We can talk about how we should never had let them come to the County Ground and beat us like they did.

You can talk about the way they played and how badly we played. At the end of the day, if you haven’t got 15 guys who step across the whitewash to play with a bit of pride and very direct then that’s just talk.

“What we saw today was a group of players who had real pride in what they were doing and sometimes it just comes down to that. We were desperate to win. The players madly wanted to win, the whole club really wanted them to win and we had a lot of support down here to cheer them on.”