WHEN Chris Stirling was summoned on board the Pirates ship last summer, the New Zealander knew life with the Cornish club was hardly going to be a leisurely stroll on deck.

His brief introduction last season to Northern Hemisphere rugby ensured he had a fair inkling of what to expect when the new Championship kicked off back in September.

Now, nine games into his first season in charge, and the 47-year-old coach is well versed in pretty much most aspects of the game in English rugby's second tier.

"It's been tough, but I always knew it would be," said Stirling, whose side have won five and lost four so far under his stewardship. "Nobody said it was going to be easy, but it hasn't made me lose any doubt in what we are doing is right.

"We have a young team down here that is learning all the time. All of them are determined to learn from the experiences they go through, whether it be through winning, losing, whatever. We had a fantastic pre-season and that was reflected in our first four games, but then reality strikes home and that is the time where the team will really begin to grow and develop a solid foundation to really build on."

Indeed, having kicked off the season with victories over Nottingham, Moseley, Doncaster and Coventry, it was a trip across the Tamar to Plymouth that saw the first real setback in Stirling's brief reign.

That 16-8 reverse at the start of October was to trigger an unhappy period for the Pirates, who were to win just one of their five fixtures that month. The latest of those setbacks was a week ago at Rotherham where the Cornishmen crashed 29-20 at Clifton Lane.

In a display which saw the visitors produce too many unenforced errors, a heap of penalties, together with a lack of genuine aggression at the breakdown area, Stirling and his squad have dug deep this past week to try and resolve some issues ahead of Sunday's visit of Bedford Blues to the Recreation Ground (2pm).

"We've done a bit of soul searching this week and the response has been positive," admitted Stirling, who has praised the recent contributions of young flanker Sam Betty. "All of them have reacted to the pain they felt in the changing room last week. Believe me when I say it was 'thick'. After the game I stood in front of them and I think they expected me to rant and rave, but sometimes just staring at them in silence has just as good an effect.

"We've spoken this week about the areas in our game which we need to sort out. It was very apparent that our accuracy at the breakdown and just the physical presence that we were delivering at the breakdown were just not sufficient to combat what was a very focused and aggressive Rotherham side on the day.

"Also the amount of penalties we conceded was a big concern. We have set a target of seven per game, yet we gave away 12 up there. A number of those were for offside in the midfield, something we hadn't been penalised at all this season for.

"Basically we were defending the same as we have for the past eight games, so the lesson there is we need to adapt to the interpretation of different officials. Obviously on the day we didn't adapt well enough and in the end got a yellow card for persistent infringing, which is not good enough."

Having talked through the areas of concern, Stirling and fellow coaches Harvey Biljon and Ian Davies will want to see a marked improvement on the park against a Blues side, who last week lost on home soil to Exeter Chiefs.

"Although we are short on fully-fit bodies right now, we had a bang up session this week and it was great for all of us," added Stirling. "The guys flew into it with a level of aggression that I haven't even seen them bring out on the field. There have been a few stinging words from the captain [Gavin Cattle] and a few stinging words amongst the boys themselves. They are all hurting right now and they want to put things right."

Bedford, however, are no mugs and Stirling knows Sunday's showdown will be another testing assignment. "I think we're two quite similar teams," he said. "Both sides like to use the ball and attack from wherever when it's on. A bit like us they've had one or two setbacks recently and they have a few injuries as well, so I guess it should be a fair old contest."

With Stirling still assessing a number of his walking wounded, the coach will finalise his team later today. However, prop Alan Paver and Jonny Bentley are definite non-starters.

Cornish Pirates (from): W Davies, R McAtee, A Havili, N Jackson, S Winn, M Ireland, R Cook, R Jones, J Moore, J Doherty, G Cattle, C Rimmer, P Andrew, R Elloway, D Ward, R Brits, L Collins, S Pammenter, B Gulliver, M Evans, S Betty, T Holmes, L McGlone, B Cowan.