CORNISH Pirates director of rugby Ian Davies is hoping the lessons learned from Saturday's 62-26 thrashing at joint promotion favourites Worcester Warriors will help them when they visit third-place London Scottish on Friday night.
The Pirates were overwhelmed by the Warriors' pace and power in the first half and trailed 43-7 at the break, but they hit back well to score three second-half tries and earn a bonus point from the trip to Sixways.
He said: "We are a developing squad and the guys will have hopefully learnt a lot from the game and will take it into London Scottish, which will be as tough but in a different way.
"Scottish are a much more set-piece orientated side than Worcester. They will scrum and maul, and Mark Bright is probably the stand-out player in the Championship and will be pulling the strings.
"(Former Redruth centre) PJ Gidlow was rested this weekend, so he will probably come at us full guns blazing, and they will be a tough nut to crack.
"We have had some close battles up there, and some kickings as well, and hopefully we will have a few people back from injury in contention for selection, but we will have to wait and see."
All the damage was done in the first half at Worcester as the impressive Warriors ran in seven tries.
Car crash
"The first half was a little bit of a car crash for us, but in the second half we showed a little bit more spirit," said Davies.
"At half-time, we said to write the first half off and to go out and get the three tries we needed for the bonus point, and we did that.
"I thought we had blown it when Darren Barry did everything but score a try, but the lads showed great spirit, as did the guys coming off the bench, to keep going to the last."
Davies added: "In some respects it was a good thing that Worcester got their bonus point so early on, because it just broke the game up a little bit and allowed us to express ourselves.
"The second-half score was 19-19 and I thought we dominated for large parts of that, and could have got a couple of other scores, but it is easy to take your foot off the gas really when you are 50 points up."
The Pirates had no answer to Worcester's initial onslaught, shipping three tries inside the first 10 minutes, and Davies said: "We looked like frightened rabbits a little bit early on. The first two scores were poor, and it just capitulated from there really.
"We were forcing things, we looked nervous and we looked like we had been thrown together the day before and we were totally disjointed, and that is something we have not been for a long, long time.
"In the first 20 minutes we didn't see the ball and we were chasing shadows a little bit and just running around, but as soon as we could get possession, the forwards showed they could produce some good quality ball for the backs, who then scored some nice tries.
"I thought Jamal (Ford-Robinson) was outstanding, especially when he switched to tight head, and we got a lot of scrum penalties which we deserved."