After a week of rest following a last-gasp victory at London Scottish, Hartpury travel to The Mennaye this weekend, home of Cornish Pirates, at the start of a demanding run of fixtures into the Christmas period.

Apart from Pirates, Richmond, Bedford and Ealing will all pose significant challenges, before Hartpury face the first ‘return’ fixture of the season when they travel to Jersey in the weekend before the festivities.

If that were not tough enough, sandwiched in the middle weeks of December are home and away clashes with Ulster in the British & Irish Cup.

However, Hartpury will feel that their performances in the Championship to date have shown that they have no reason to fear a testing schedule, after just one defeat in their last five league games leaves them sitting in the relative comfort of mid-table.

Despite a patchy performance against the Exiles last time out, director of rugby John Barnes is happy to see the league points piling up.

“London Scottish was a good win, in the end,” he said. “We scored nice and early in the first half, but after that we struggled to retain possession and exert any pressure.

“Our defence was excellent throughout the game and that was the main reason that we were able to win. Making 160 tackles and only conceding one try represented a massive shift, particularly from our forward eight.”

Hartpury have still yet to give up a four-try bonus point to any Championship opponent this season.

“We created a number of chances in the final quarter without the final pass ever going to hand,” said Barnes. “It looked as though we might be made to regret it, but Scottish turned down a kickable penalty and then knocked on from the resulting scrum.

“That gave us a last chance and we built a superb attack from inside our own 22. Eventually the forwards released the ball and Mike Wilcox won’t have an easier finish this season.”

Looking ahead, Sunday’s fixture will not be the first time that Hartpury have met the Pirates this season, coming a distinct second best in a B&I Cup match four weeks ago. However, Barnes does not believe that result will have any bearing this time around.

“We will have a much changed squad from that game,” he said. “We won’t be reading anything into that result, but we do recognise that they are a good side – well-coached and in good form after thumping Doncaster last time out.”

With two wins from their seven matches, Pirates sit one place and three points behind Hartpury in the current table.

Their last fixture saw them drub the Knights 46-29 at Castle Park, the Yorkshire side’s first home league defeat of 2017-18. The Pirates had a tricky start to the campaign, suffering a number of narrow defeats, but are a test for anybody on their home turf.

“Cornwall is always a difficult place to go,” said Barnes, perhaps remembering unsuccessful trips to the likes of Redruth and Launceston during Hartpury’s rise through the national leagues. “We are expecting an extremely difficult game in front of a big Remembrance Day crowd.”

The match will be live-streamed by the RFU, the first time that Hartpury have featured this way in this campaign, although it will not be a new pressure for the majority of the squad.

“We’ve already been on live TV this season,” said Barnes, “and we’ve been regularly streamed in the BUCS competition on Wednesdays, so nothing new there.”

The week of rest has given the squad time to get over the majority of the niggles and, other than long-term absentees such as Steve Leonard and Harry Randall, general health is good going into Sunday’s fixture, which kicks off at 2.30pm.