Carnegie are ready to repel '¨the Pirates

The Yorkshire Carnegie lock, 31, is in the side as they host his old team at Headingley in the Championship tomorrow.

Myerscough, who hails from Bude in Cornwall, spent his formative years with tomorrow’s visitors before moving north to Leeds.

“I’m almost an adopted Yorkshireman now after six seasons here but I did have some good times down at the Pirates and it’s always good to then face your old team,” he said.

“There’s hardly anybody still there apart from Chris Morgan, the captain, and the coaches Alan Paver and Gav Cattle who were players when I was there.

“All three of them were at my wedding down at St Ives during the summer.”

While Carnegie have lost just once in their opening four league games, their rivals have only won once but that statistic does not deceive Myerscough.

“They’ve been unfortunate with their start,” he said, the Pirates having lost by just a point at Ealing, two against relegated Bristol and six at Jersey. They took Bristol really close and are a hard-working side.

“Alan and Gav will have instilled that work ethic in them to do it for 80 minutes and that shows with those scorelines.

“They are exciting to watch and scored a lot of tries against Rotherham last week (62-47) to get their first win so we’ll have to be on point.”

Carnegie, meanwhile, drew 29-29 at Hartpury College after a woeful first half.

“It was frustrating,” added Myerscough, who fills in at blindside flanker again tomorrow.

“In the first half we didn’t get any of the big impacts in defensively that we did against Doncaster the week before.

“That allowed Hartpury to run us around a little bit in the first half.

“But we’ve great team spirit here and managed to come back to draw whilst almost actually winning at the death.

“It’s great to have Jimmy (Lowes) back as coach; he’s got a hard edge back in us which was something we missed in the last few years which was worrying.

“We’ve a few people coming back now, too, and I think we can be in for a good season.”

Lowes makes four changes with youngster Louie Brown starting on the wing after his try-scoring effort down at Hartpury.

He replaces Harry Davies while up front prop Charlie Beech and hooker Joe Buckle are amongst the replacements this week which allows Elliot Millar-Mills and Mike Mayhew to start their first games of the season in the front-row. Lock Dan Sanderson replaces injured Matt Smith, Lewis Wilson coming in on the bench.