Glasgow Hawks' hopes of remaining in the top half of the RBS Premiership table suffered a setback on Saturday when they lost to championship leaders Gala at Netherdale in a match that turned on its head 10 minutes before the break.
There were two game-changing moments and they were not necessarily independent events. First, Gala began to find an intensity of performance manifestly missing in the first half hour, and then Hawks' replacement, No.8 Ross Miller, was yellow-carded for obvious interference off the ball with Gala's scrum- half Grayson Hart.
From that point, Gala dominated, quickly wiping out Hawks' lead before going on to crush the visitors' attempts to recover lost ground, leaving the Anniesland men deflated at the end and their coach Jamie Dempsey dismayed at having let slip an early lead when their forwards were in charge of the game.
"We were 14-3 ahead after controlling territory and having asked them serious questions," he said. "We made a couple of errors and let them come back into the game. They're going for the title and they showed that by remaining composed. We lost a man to the sin-bin and it cost us 19 points. That's been the story of our season. It's expensive and players have got to understand that."
Yet Hawks' big forwards threatened to blow Gala off the park in the opening exchanges and they should have made more of their early dominance. But Gala are not at the top of the table for naivety in defence and again showed their skills in this area by preventing Hawks on three occasions from grounding the ball over the line.
The visitors' power game had paid early dividends, with a try from a driven lineout by the captain and second row Andy Linton, and the conversion by the former Melrose player Scott Wight. Strength, weight and power were again in evidence as Hawks grabbed their second try by Miller off the back of a five-metre scrum, Wight again converting.
"I thought the Hawks boys had a wee bit more hunger in the forwards," said George Graham, the Gala coach. "They're big forwards but big doesn't necessarily mean good. I think they had picked a big pack to try to bully us up front and to be fair they did that in the first thirty minutes. But when we get good quick clean ball we look dangerous."
Having been outmuscled for the first half-hour of the game, Gala then started playing with much greater intensity and crucially much greater pace. Three times they turned down the chance to kick at goal and were eventually rewarded with a try from soft hands by stand-off David O'Hagan and a clever line of running by centre Ewan Scott, who converted his own score.
Just before half time, Gala showed good handling skills from broken play; it ended with winger Grant Somerville touching down in the corner and Scott converting. Then, just after the break, a subtle off-load by hooker Callum Mackintosh gave flanker Scott Chapman Gala's third try.
The hosts' second-half dominance was capped with a second try by Scott and his conversion to give Gala a bonus-point win and Hawks no share of the spoils.
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