Westoe teach Students a lesson

By contrast Loughborough, second-top of the league with wins against Macclesfield and Rugby Lions, and a pre-season victory against the England Under-20 team, were extremely confident, and this proved to be their downfall.

The Students cruised into a 9-0 lead in the first 15 minutes as the Dunes Adventure Island-sponsored Westoe gave away a plethora of penalties converted by Pyrgos, the current England Under-21 scrum-half.

In a rare foray into the Loughborough half, Charlie Raynor kicked a penalty for Westoe to make the half-time score 9-3, and things did not look good for the Shieldsmen.

The Students had created far more scoring chances, and only their own last-pass handling errors and a superb try-saving tackle from centre James Clark kept the score down.

The home support fully expected Westoe to tire, especially in the hot sunny conditions, and for the Students to exploit their superior fitness to run in the four tries they needed for a bonus point – they were that certain of winning.

But Westoe had not read the same script, and their big experienced pack took control of the scrummages, and then began to compete well in the loose, where new signing Aaron Myers fully lived up to his reputation as a fast and strong forager.

Despite this, an overthrow at a Westoe attacking line-out saw Burgess, Loughborough's No8 and captain, catch the ball at the tail and run fully 60m to score at the posts.

Pyrgos added the conversion, and the score was 16-3 with most of the second half to go.

What happened next was of great credit to the leadership of Gareth Nesbitt, Westoe's loose head prop and skipper, and to the team's spirit, despite fielding seven players new to the club.

They simply rolled their sleeves up and worked even harder.

Myers and Raynor combined well on the hour in a move that began in the Westoe 20m area, was continued by full-back James Phillips, and finished under the posts by David Haswell.

Raynor added the two points, and Westoe were back in the game at 16-10.

Almost immediately the same combination provided a try for Chris Clark, which Raynor converted to put Westoe into a 16-17 lead.

With continued scrummage pressure, and with Westoe beginning to dominate in the loose, the Students' collective heads dropped.

By contrast, the Shieldsmen weathered some pressure and then struck again after Myers pinched the ball at a ruck, and a simple passing movement saw Phillips gallop over for an unconverted try.

After playing 15 minutes of injury time the referee ended what Westoe's towering lock Paul Bird described as "Not so much a come-back but a resurrection!"

Director of rugby Andy Howells said: "We've been telling the team what they need to do to survive at this new National level, which is to work and concentrate for the whole 80 minutes, and that is what they did today."

Skipper Gareth Nesbitt confirmed that the whole team were exhausted but happy, and added: "It was important to kick start our season with an away win and against a much fancied team. This moves us up to fourth from bottom, but more importantly we know how to win at this level."