Ian Davies targets victory over Carmarthen for home quarter-final
Cornish Pirates head coach Ian Davies was pleased with his side's performance against Dundee High yesterday.
The Penzance club's 34-14 victory secured them a quarter-final place with top spot in Pool Three.
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Ian Davies
A win against Carmarthen Quins in the final group game next weekend would guarantee them a home game when the knock-out stages begin.
Davies saw his side run six tries past Dundee at Mennaye Field yesterday through Sam Hill, Kieran Hallett, Phil Burgess, Wes Davies (two) and Dave Lyons for a bonus-point success.
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He said: "We probably got more out of the game than we even anticipated, to be honest.
"The win was the important thing because that gave us the qualification for the quarter-finals. We've always said that is one of our goals this season.
"To get the bonus point was even more pleasing. I think we played some good stuff, we scored some good tries without really having a lot of intensity – no offence to Dundee.
"That said, we still had to work hard for the victory because Dundee played well for the whole 80 minutes and kept going right to the end.
"We made ten changes to start with. In the first half, we coasted along and scored when we needed to score. It was a lovely try by Phil Burgess after Kieran Hallett and Ben Mercer's interplay down the blindside, that was a really nice score.
"At half time, we said we wanted to challenge ourselves, so we set ourselves a couple of targets. We wouldn't have chosen to lose our ten and 13 within ten minutes of the start of the second half.
"It did disrupt us with Tom Bedford having to play at ten and Phil Burgess moved onto the wing but we coped.
"If anything, we tried to play a bit too much and tried to be a bit too clever with off-loads and things like that."
Pirates beat Carmarthen 44-32 at Mennaye Field in October and Davies is expecting another tough game in the reverse fixture next Saturday.
According to Davies, many at the Welsh club still feel the second-half yellow card for their former Cornish Pirate Darren Daniels was crucial in the final outcome.
"Carmarthen is going to be a really tough game," said Davies. "They are still smarting from the defeat down here. They think they could have beaten us, if it wasn't for the yellow card that allowed us to get some points on the board.
"They are going to be up for it and they are going to want to have the scalp of the team that won the pool.They will be at home, it will be Wales against England, full-time against part-time and they will pull as many things in their favour as they can pluck out.
"We are going to have an Irish referee and two Welsh touch judges, so we won't get any favours there.
"We will have to be very accurate and clinical in what we do.
"We need a win to secure that home quarter final and that will be our next target now because we like playing at home – as we have proven over the last few weeks.
"We know it is not going to be easy, but let's accept the challenge."
Comments
by ukmiker
Monday, January 14 2013, 2:18PM
“Good to see Ian acknowledging that we had to work hard - some of Dundee's play did make us look a bit pedestrian (in my humble opinion)...and they made us give a number of penalties away in our own half...good win in the end though...here's to quarter final at The Mennaye!”