As we gathered for the afternoon session, we were greeted with the news that Mark Hewitt had departed the Pirates and that Brett Davey was taking over affairs until the end of the season.

Well it's been a turbulent old week in the Pirates camp. Pay cuts and a coach leaving, it's been as difficult a week as I've experienced in my seven years in the Duchy.

I think it's only fair that I go through the events in chronological order and possibly explain a different side of what happened.

Sunday, 15 February saw us knocked out of the cup to a talented Nottingham side.

There's no getting away from it, the scoreline was comprehensive. From the outside looking in, we were soundly beaten. Within the squad, we knew we had missed a huge opportunity and we knew how we had missed it.

Defensively, our statistics showed that we were better in our recent match against Nottingham than the last time we met, when we led for large periods and only narrowly lost.

It was undoubtedly our 'set piece' and our poor discipline that cost us on this occasion. That said, you only get one life in the cup and we've lost ours so it was onto Monday and to try and move on and progress.

Monday came and with it, some bad news. From the players point of view, anyway. We were informed that due to budgetary demands and increased costs of playing in 'The Championship' next year, pay cuts were on the horizon. As I'm sure you can imagine this was met with a mixed response, and left us struggling to draw any positives from the situation.

If Monday was a tough day, Tuesday was ready to take it to another level. We had trained at Truro College, as is per usual for a Tuesday and we had just finished our morning session.

Things like this are however, a part of professional sport and we must move on, wishing Mark the very best of luck along the way of course Alan Paver

As we gathered for the afternoon session, we were greeted with the news that Mark Hewitt had departed the Pirates and that Brett Davey was taking over affairs until the end of the season.

Naturally this came as a shock to the boys. Things like this are however, a part of professional sport and we must move on, wishing Mark the very best of luck along the way of course.

And so the week was drawing to a close and we still had the ominous task of heading to Moseley with pressure mounting to offer a rebuttal from the week before. If anything, the events of the week have drawn the boys closer and we went up to Moseley as a single, determined unit.

Despite a mediocre first 20 minutes, I think this shone through as we went on to produce an outstanding second-half display.

Nicky Griffiths returning from injury was outstanding and epitomised everything good about us on the day.

So what for the rest of the season? Well, mathematically third place is possible. So we may as well shoot for the stars! And if fourth place is the rooftops: Well I'm sure we'd take that too!

Until next week

Grind On.

Paves

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