By Phil Westren

WITH pre-season fixtures completed, the focus for the Cornish Pirates has turned fully to the business side of the season, starting with tonight’s league opener away to Nottingham (7.45pm).

Skipper John Stevens, captaining the club for the third season running, will lead out a side at Lady Bay including two players in the starting XV, namely scrum-half Cameron Jones and prop James French, who will be making their first league appearances for the club. 

The same will also apply to replacements Matt Cannon, Dan Hiscocks and Charlie McCaig, should they get expected calls off the bench.

Commenting ahead of Friday night’s encounter, coach Joe Walsh said: “Firstly, feeling we have got through a large body of work during pre-season, we are pleased how it has gone.

“Experiencing the different levels of competition in our three our pre-season games proved worthy, and following the away game against Exeter Chiefs, who naturally provided strong opposition, there is now an opportunity to fix certain errors made. We also took a lot from the trip to Carmarthen Quins, such as getting used to the away schedule which should help us this week.

“So, pretty happy with things overall, and with the addition of a couple of new bodies, we should be in a good position going into this weekend. We have trialled new systems and now is the time to apply them fully. Also, with a good gameplan going in this opener, and taking all the learning from our weeks of pre-season training, it will hopefully enable us to perform well.”

The full Cornish Pirates selection for tonight is as follows:

CORNISH PIRATES: 15 Will Trewin 14 Robin Wedlake 13 Matt McNab 12 Joe Elderkin 11 Arthur Relton 10 Bruce Houston 9 Cameron Jones; 1 Billy Young 2 Morgan Nelson 3 James French 4 Josh King 5 Hugh Bokenham 6 Alex Everett 7 Will Gibson 8 John Stevens (captain). Replacements: 16 Harry Hocking 17 Billy Keast 18 Jay Tyack 19 Matt Cannon 20 Charlie Rice 21 Dan Hiscocks 22 Iwan Jenkins 23 Charlie McCaig.