A Gala occasion to forget

Langholm 32

These sides met last Friday in a rescheduled East Division 2 encounter, postponed earlier in the season because Langholm could not raise a team.

This time, however, they arrived at Netherdale with a strong side which was too powerful for the home team.

YM’s tackling let them down after it being a feature of their games this season.

There was not a lot between the sides in the first half but the YM just could not breach the Langholm defence and the Milntown men were more to the fore on the attacking front.

The hosts lost Duncan Miller with a cut head in the opening 10 minutes, and, shortly afterwards, poor defending let veteran number eight Stuart Graham in for a try.

Sam Henderson’s conversion attempt came back off the upright before Millar returned, heavily bandaged.

Constant attacks by Langholm put Gala under pressure.

Centre Niall Cubbon collected the ball in his own half, skipped through the tackle, then accelerated down the pitch and fed to Nicky Laidlaw.

He handed on to Graham, who ran 30 metres to score under the posts, with Henderson adding the extras.

Gala YM then went to the Langholm line and there were several close calls before Tom Weir forced over for a try, with Lyle Campbell adding the extras.

From the restart, YM failed to gather the ball from the long kick off. When it went loose, it was gathered by Nathan Chisholm, for the visitors, who dived over to score under the bar with under a minute of the second half played.

Henderson converted, after which YM staged a number of threatening attacks, but the strong Langholm defence held out.

Langholm got back on top and Henderson ran in for the bonus fourth try, which he also converted, putting the visitors out of sight.

An overthrow by Langholm at the lineout led to Gala grabbing a non-converted try from Tom Weir, his second of the game.

Langholm sent on a number of replacements and Henderson landed two penalties.