Cornish Pirates

PIRATES' full-back Adryan Winnan believes the club's next two league games will offer the perfect benchmark of just how much progress the Cornish club are making this season.

On Sunday, Jim McKay's side travel to Nottingham for the first of two tough away-days, the second comes a week on Saturday against current National One leaders Rotherham.

According to Winnan, however, they are games the Pirates are relishing, especially after they chalked up their fifth successive win with a 37-20 success over Exeter Chiefs at Camborne last Sunday.

"They are massive games for us," said Winnan, who returned home to his native Cornwall in the summer following spells playing in the Guinness Premiership for Saracens and in France for Tarbes. "I know it's a cliché, but we'll take each game at it comes. Obviously Nottingham is first up and that will be pretty tough, they showed that by beating Plymouth at home the other week. After that we go to Rotherham, the league leaders, so that will offer us a really good benchmark as to where we stand at the moment." However, the experienced 23-year-old insists the Pirates should fear no one in the division, particularly with the form they have shown since their narrow defeat to Leeds Tykes.

Adryan Winnan

"The Leeds defeat was very disappointing, but we've moved on well since then," said Winnan, whose father Paul played 53 times for Cornwall between 1970 and 1985. "I think we learnt a lot as a team from that game. We've being playing some excellent rugby, which is pleasing, but we are still very much progressing as a team.

"We only really played for 25 minutes against Exeter, yet we put 37 boards on the board, which is incredible. We've got some fantastic strike power in our team and if we can play for 70 or 80 minutes like that, then we're going to put maybe 50, 60 points on someone."

A crowd of over 4,000 turned out for last Sunday's derby encounter with the Chiefs, a statistic not lost on Winnan. He added: "The main thing that struck me was the crowd, it was fantastic. As a Cornishman it's great to have that kind of support for your team and let's hope it continues and they keep coming back.

"Playing at home it's important to be strong. We want to make this a tough place to come and play rugby. I'm not really one for all that derby stuff, to me it's just another game. It could be Pirates versus Exeter or Pirates versus Moseley, at the end of the day it's a game of rugby and I want to win every game I play in."