GAVIN Cattle said a close eye will be kept on player numbers when they travel to play the Bedford Blues on Saturday.

When the teams met in the British & Irish Cup on October 12, the Pirates won 35-34 in a closely fought affair.

However, they then had this victory taken away from them after the RFU ruled they had breach regulations for playing numbers after prop Tyler Gendall was injured and replaced by Bertie Hopkins, forcing uncontested scrums.

However, the rules state the Pirates should have played on with just 14 men and despite appealing the decision, the score was changed to 34-28 to Bedford.

With the Pirates needing a win to give themselves a chance to go through to the quarter finals, Cattle said it was a crucial match against a side they comfortably beat.

“Every match we play is important,” the player-coach said.

“We got a good win against Bedford in the league a couple of weeks ago, but for us it is about learning to do it again and again and I don’t Bedford will play as poorly as they did in the Championship match.

“One thing that won’t happen is the player numbers situation, that mistake won’t happen again.”

Cattle played 79 minutes of the Pirates 31-30 loss against Doncaster Knights on Saturday, who beat their hosts despite being 20 points behind with 11 minutes left.

He said: “I think we all have to put our hands up though and say at crucial times we should have managed the game a bit better.”

“We are a little bit immature as a team and we need to use the result as a lesson.

“There are positives to take from it as we had control of possession and our maul was strong, but we should have closed the game out.”