Nottingham Rugby are back in action this weekend as they travel to the South West to take on Cornish Pirates in a cup match taking place on Sunday afternoon (3pm).

Last time out Nottingham produced an excellent win over Bedford to move to sixth in the table and as the league championship takes time off to concentrate on cup rugby focus now for Nottingham over the next three weeks is getting out of the group stages of the Championship Cup to qualify for the latter rounds of the competition.

Currently Nottingham are third in Pool C behind London Scottish (who they play at home next week) at the top and Cornish Pirates in second but ahead of Yorkshire Carnegie (who they face at Headingly on December 14^th) who they thumped earlier in the season 83-0. Whilst the winners of the three pools each qualify for the Quarter Finals with the best runners up the four next best teams still have an opportunity to qualify of which Nottingham currently lie 8^th best thanks largely to that win over Yorkshire.

Two wins from their remaining three games would almost certainly be enough for Nottingham to qualify and starting this weekend against the Pirates who have so far beat them twice this season would be perfect, although last time out in league action it was much tighter (losing 14-23) than the 42-7 loss the green and whites suffered back in October during the early weeks of the cup.

Nottingham despite their need to win to keep their competition alive have however made twelve changes to the team that beat Bedford in the league as Manager Neil Fowkes stated “Some of the boys that have come out of the side have played a lot of rugby for us so they needed to come out to ensure they’re in the best place going forward in to the rest of the season.”

“Some of the guys need an opportunity. Some of them have been waiting a long time to pull on the Green and White jersey in a competitive fixture so we feel it’s the right time to do that.”

The side to make the trip to Cornwall for Sundays tie is as follows.

Starting Team: Tom Benjamin, Jack Spittle, Harry Strong, Will Simonds, David Williams, Shane O’Leary, Murray McConnell, Jamie Jack, Ben Brownlie, Ben Betts, Llewelyn Jones, Oliver Chessum, Seb Cecil, George Cox, Tui Uru.

Replacements: Luke Cole, Aniseko Sio, Oisin Heffernan, Callum Allen, Scott Hall, Alex Dolly, Matt Riddington, Caetano Branco.

*Main image @cornishpirates1 Nottingham last time out against the Pirates losing 14-23 at the Bay.