Western Force stand-in captain Sam Wykes hailed his side's fighting spirit as they opened their Super Rugby season with a shock 25-13 victory over defending champions the Waratahs.
Four tries, from Chris Alcock, Angus Cottrell, Luke Morahan and Francois van Wyk, earned the visitors a bonus-point victory, while the Waratahs' title defence started with a whimper at Allianz Stadium.
"It wasn't pretty with our set-piece but we just fought our way out of it and we just stayed on the whole game," Wykes told Super Rugby's official website. "The boys were outstanding."
On a weekend of upsets, the result meant that Force started their Super Rugby campaign with victory for the first time in 10 years in the competition.
And according to Wykes - captaining the side through the opening weeks of the season in the absence of the injured Matt Hodgson - it also laid down an early marker of their intentions to improve on last season's finish, when they narrowly missed out on the play-offs.
"We want to go one better than last year and we have performance goals along the way that we need to tick off," he added.
"We have a hard game next week against the Queensland Reds."
One bright spark for the champions was the performance of Rob Horne, who scored a double to register Waratahs only tries, although their late pressure in search of a losing bonus point was ultimately in vain.
