Following two pre-season friendly matches home and away against Plymouth Albion, the attention for the Cornish Pirates now focuses fully on the long awaited and exciting opening Premiership Rugby Cup game – a first for the Pirates – at home versus Bath Rugby on Friday evening (ko 7.30pm).

For this Friday night under lights encounter, which is guaranteed to be played in front of a large crowd, the Pirates have named four summer arrivals in their starting XV. The quartet comprises full-back Kyle Moyle, who has made a welcome return to the club from Gloucester, centre Matt McNab, fly-half Tom Pittman, and prop Leftheri Zigiriadis.

As for the bench, six of the eight who featured in the pre-season friendlies versus Plymouth Albion, will be ready to play their first competitive match fixtures for the Pirates. They are hooker Rhys Williams and lock Josh King, the pair having officially joined the Pirates this week, plus there is prop Fin Richardson, backrower Harry Dugmore, fly-half Iwan Jenkins, and centre Ioan Evans.

Looking forward to Friday night’s contest, Cornish Pirates’ joint head coach Gavin Cattle has commented:

“It is great for us to have the opportunity to welcome an historic club such as Bath to the Mennaye Field, remembering too that is many years since they would have last visited.

“We are also fully aware that it will be a test for our squad, but everyone is quite rightly looking forward to the challenge.

“From our perspective, at this starting stage of the season there will be playing combinations to learn more about, and it will be interesting to see our overall level of performance against such quality opposition.

“To their credit all the lads have worked very hard during the summer,

and for them, the supporters, and everyone involved it should be a great occasion.”

Match Tickets:   For further information please link to:

https://cornish-pirates.com/tickets/

The Cornish Pirates full selection for Friday is as follows:

Cornish Pirates:   15 Kyle Moyle 14 Will Trewin 13 Matt McNab 12 Joe Elderkin 11 Arthur Relton, 10 Tom Pittman 9 Ruaridh Dawson; 1 Leftheri Zigiriadis 2 Morgan Nelson 3 Marlen Walker 4 Alex Everett 5 Will Britton 6 John Stevens (captain) 7 Will Gibson 8 Ben Grubb.

Replacements:   16 Rhys Williams 17 Fin Richardson 18 Jack Andrew 19 Josh King 20 Harry Dugmore, 21 Alex Schwarz 22 Iwan Jenkins 23 Ioan Evans.

Referee:   Hamish Grant

Assistants:   Kevin Williams & Paul Dix

Official 4:   James Milliner-Woodcock

PR/Coach:   Steve Leyshon

Match Day Sponsor:   Kernow Model Rail Centre

Match Ball Sponsor:   Yeomans

Match Day Collection:   RNLI Penlee Branch