Doncaster Knights need to keep finding ways to win to end Cornish Pirates hoodoo

Doncaster have won four of their opening five games, an eye-catching thrashing of Cambridge being the headline grabber, and although that was the closest the Knights have come to a complete performance, what has heartened Boden most is the way they have ground out victories against Hartpury at the start of the season and London Scottish last weekend.

"What was really pleasing, and we’ve shown it all season, the ability to close games out which will hopefully stand us in good stead,” said the director of rugby who steered Doncaster to 17 wins and a runner-up finish in the league two seasons ago.

"We’ve done it once or twice now, we did it well against Hartpury and against London Scottish at the weekend we didn’t panic, stayed in the game, until we needed to pull away.

"If you’re going to have a successful season there’s going to be three or four tight games, that’s the nature of it.

"It doesn’t matter who it’s against – Scottish had 10 loan players in from Harlequins – so you’re going to have to win those tight games. When we needed to be really good we were.”

Doncaster make the long trip to the south west on Sunday to take on their old rivals Cornish Pirates.

Pirates are just one win behind the Knights by virtue of having played a game fewer, but as always Boden sends his men out onto the field concentrating only on themselves.

“We’re still finding our feet, we’ve got a lot of injuries like most squads have,” he said.

“I’d probably say we’ve had one 80-minute performance which was away at Cambridge.

"We’re looking to get our game more consistent for longer patches.”

Cornish Pirates versus Doncaster Knights is a long-standing second-tier rivalry in English rugby, one that has seen good times and bad times for both clubs.

But for Doncaster the trip to Mennaye Field in recent years has brought nothing but heartache as they look to maintain a strong start to the Championship season.

"This weekend is going to be a massive old challenge, we haven’t won there for seven years or so,” said Boden, whose team the last two years has lost by 20-plus points on Cornish soil.

“It just goes to show how tough it is to go down there and get a result.

"We fully respect Pirates as a team, and hopefully the strength of the performance we put in shows how much respect we’ve got for them.

"They’re well coached, they’ve got a really good link with Exeter which helps them a lot.

"They look like a team that wants to play for each other.”