Cornish Pirates

Pirates 39 Sedgley Park 13
Sunday 4th February 2007

WHILST the stricken MSC Napoli remains beached just off the East Devon coastline, further west the Cornish Pirates continue to sail swimmingly towards the summit of National League One.

Having overcome a tricky swell of fixtures in recent weeks, Jim McKay's hearty bunch again had too much for visiting Sedgley Park as they cruised to a 39-13 success at Camborne yesterday.

The Pirates followed up their 55-3 win over the Manchester-based club back in October, by claiming their first five-point success in the league since winning at Moseley in mid-December.

It was a victory, coupled with Rotherham's inactivity because of a frozen pitch at Nottingham, which helped lift the Pirates back into second spot in the division, eight points adrift of leaders Leeds, who they face this Friday in the fifth round of this season's EDF Energy National Trophy.

Realistically, though, the Pirates are well aware they will need to be much sharper for their trip to Headingley than they were yesterday. An end try-count of 5-1 certainly sounds good enough, but for periods of the game the home side were forced to live off scrappy possession as the vibrant visitors offered a decent enough threat with their livewire back division.

Had they possessed more patience and penetration out wide, the Pirates could well have been struggling to hold their series of attacks. Several times the visitors worked good openings, only for poor handling or some last-ditch tackling to thwart their advances.

The Pirates, on the other hand, were more ruthless when handed similar scoring opportunities. Whereas Sedgley were unable to find the necessary firepower to get them over the gain line, the home side had a plethora of hard-hitting options at their disposal.

With the scores locked at 6-6 after two penalties apiece from Alberto Di Bernardo (Pirates) and Phil Jones (Sedgley), the Pirates finally laid claim to their opening try on 27 minutes.

Rhodri McAtee, Duncan Roke and Alan Paver all dented their way into the Sedgley 22, before the ball was scooped up by the Pirates pack and mauled towards the try-line. With the try inevitable, referee Terry Hall had little option but to go in under the sticks when Park lock Lloyd Benjamin hauled the assembled gathering to the floor.

Alan Paver dents his way into the Sedgley 22

Argentinian ace Di Bernardo converted from in front of the posts, but he was unable to add the extras to Tim Cowley's touchdown just four minutes later, the imposing No.8 picking up from the base of a five-metre scrum to barge over in the right-hand corner.

The Pirates were now in the ascendancy and they rightfully claimed a third score on the stroke of half-time. A line-out move in the corner saw the ball fed to skipper Gavin Cattle, he fired the ball left to Di Bernardo, who in turn produced a sumptuous miss move in the midfield to find centre Duncan Bell, who collected at pace to go in by the posts.

Di Bernardo finds Duncan Bell

Di Bernardo's conversion brought the curtain down on the half as the Pirates went in 25-6 to the good.

Sedgley, though, returned with a renewed vigour and within seven minutes of the restart claimed their first try of the game, flanker Ledua Jope crossing for an effort, which Jones happily converted.

The score, however, merely acted as a wake-up call to the Pirates, who responded with some panache. A jinking break through the middle by the impressive Bell saw him combine with Di Bernardo to send Iva Motusaga over for the all-important fourth try.

From here the Pirates should have inflicted further misery on their opponents. That they didn't was a concern, particularly as they allowed Sedgley to control large parts of the possession.

Home frustrations were clear to see and when replacement prop Dan Seal was sin-binned just three minutes after arriving on the field, you kind of sensed the Pirates were already looking ahead to their forthcoming trip to Yorkshire.

Once they did regain their composure, they wrapped up victory with a late Grant Anderson try, converted by James Moore.

Afterwards coach McKay admitted it was a mixed display from his side, but the Aussie was keen to focus on the positives. He said: "We're really happy with the five points and the end result. There were good things to our game today and there were a few things that were not so good.

"The good things were that we got to use a lot of the bench guys, plus James Inglis got his first start in a while. We also scored some really good tries and some of the mauls we created were top drawer.

"On the downside, some of play did not go as we intended it too. However, that's something we can work on this week, the main thing was to win and get the five points, which we did."

Cornish Pirates 39

Tries - Penalty Try, Cowley, Bell, Motusaga, Anderson
Conversions - Di Bernardo 3, Moore
Penalties - Di Bernardo 2

Sedgley Park 13

Try - Jope
Conversion - Jones
Penalties - Jones 2.

Pirates
A Winnan; R McAtee, D Roke (L Vinnicombe 69), D Bell, J Hylton; ADi Bernardo (J Moore 73)
G Cattle (capt); A Paver (G Anderson 77), N Makin (V Ma'asi 54), S Heard (D Seal 54); H Senekal
J Inglis; S McKeen, I Motusaga (Anderson 61-69), T Cowley.

Replacement (not used): J Beardshaw.

Yellow Card: Seal.

Sedgley Park:
C Hall; H Monsell, C Briers, I Voortman (J Duffy 65), A Craig; P Jones, C Leck (J Albinson 65)
P Gazzola (G Roberts 75), J Roddam (P Keys 78), P Du Plessis; L Benjamin, E Norris
L Jope (D Livesey 75), A Newton, J Skurr (capt).
Replacements (not used): T Fourie, J Ponton.

Referee: T Hall (RFU).

Attendance: 2,012.