IAN Davies admitted his Cornish Pirates side hurt themselves during their season opener with Yorkshire Carnegie by giving away soft penalties.

The club's director of rugby said the players were frustrated with referee Simon Harding's officiating at the scrum as they continuously got penalised for this set piece during Sunday's game.

But he added against a team like Carnegie who have a number of players with Premiership experience, you cannot afford to give them territory and possession through indiscipline.

Davies said: "The interpretation at the scrum went against us and the boys were a bit confused when they came in at half time.

"But we didn't defend well against the driving maul all afternoon and we didn't get continuity when attacking and against a team like Carnegie you need all facets of play to be working.

"We were our own worst enemy at times as we gave them good field position with a lot of cheap penalties.

"I was a bit surprised that in a game with 41 penalties there weren't any yellow cards, but maybe Carnegie's Premiership experience and small talk to the officials kept their players on the park and thankfully none of ours got sinbinned either."

With London Scottish travelling to the Mennaye next Sunday fresh from a 32-23 win over Rotherham, Davies said the Pirates will need to get firing on all cylinders.

"On Saturday, Scottish mauled Rotherham off the park so we will have to defend better on that," he said.

"We also need to work on our attacking play and get more tries on the board.

"You can't question the work rate of the players against Yorkshire, but we could have been a bit better in certain areas.

"It is only game one though and we'll go ahead and learn lessons from it."