Gala keep up push for promotion to rugby’s Tennent’s Premiership with bonus-point victory at Watsonians

The Galashiels side are in third place, with 58 points from 14 games, after beating the Edinburgh side 25-12 at their Myreside Stadium home ground at the weekend.

That’s five points behind table-toppers Heriot’s Blues and two adrift of second-placed Biggar, but they’ve got two games in hand on the former and one on the latter, and the eight games they’ve got left include a potential title decider on the last day of the season – Saturday, April 16 – at home to the league leaders at Netherdale and fixtures home and away against the South Lanarkshire side.

Gala’s try-scorers in the capital were Matt Reid, Marius Tamosaitis, Angus Dun and Rex Jeffrey, with Harris Rutherford adding a conversion and Scott Peffers a penalty.

Next up for them is a trip to eighth-placed Dundee on Saturday, February 12, with kick-off at 2pm.

Jeffrey remains optimistic that Gala can keep up their promotion push as the end of the season looms closer, telling Borders Rugby TV: “We’re still as confident as we were before.

“We’re just trying to keep wins coming. That’s all we’re trying to do – keep winning and putting points away – and that was another good bonus-point win today against a good side, much better than we thought they’d be, so we’re quite happy with the win.

“When it comes down to the end of the season, you’ll need bonus points as Heriot’s have got a few already and Biggar have as well, so every point matters.

“A few years ago, that would have been a game we’d end up losing – I don’t know if it’s a mentality thing or not – but this time we managed to find a way and we managed to grind it out, and that shows we’re a hell of a sight better than we used to be.

“When it comes down to the crunch, we can hold our own.

“We’ve got a couple of big games coming up, especially against Biggar and the game at Melrose as well, so we’re just slowly building towards them and just trying to get wins under our belt and build a bit of momentum and that, so we’ll just keep plugging away and hopefully get results when it comes to the bigger teams. That’s all we can do.”

Melrose also won in NL1, 34-12 at home to Highland, but Kelso lost away to Heriot’s, by 24-19.

Those results leave Melrose in fourth place with 50 points from 15 games and Kelso fifth with 47 from 17.

Melrose are at home to Selkirk in the Border League this Friday at 7.30pm and at home to Boroughmuir in NL1 on Saturday, February 12, at 3pm.

Boroughmuir are also Kelso’s next opponents, at home on Saturday, February 19, at 3pm.

Melrose’s try-scorers against Highland were Richard Ferguson, Gavin Wood twice, James Brown, Jack Dobie and Donald Crawford, with Struan Hutchison converting twice.

The Greenyards side are 13 points adrift of Heriot’s but head coach Bert Grigg isn’t ruling out a late promotion challenge, saying: “If we just worry about ourselves and focus on our own results first, that’s all we can do now, and if anyone above us slips up, we’ll take the opportunities. That’s what we’ve got to focus on.”

Kelso’s tries at Goldenacre, both unconverted, were scored by Charlie Marshall and Greg Ponton, with Dwain Patterson adding three penalties.