Gala 24 - 10 Ayr: Millar time for Gala glory

THE last time George Graham found himself coaching at Murrayfield he was with the Scotland squad as forwards boss under Frank Hadden back in 2008. Whatever you make of that period in Scotland’s Test history, no one can deny that the pugnacious little character has reinvented himself as a very handy club coach in the Borders.

This is Gala’s first season back in Premier One after a six-year gap but they finished third in the league and, yesterday afternoon, added their first RBS National Cup victory since Chris Paterson helped them to glory in 1999. “It’s not often you see me smile like this,” Graham joked after the whistle. “I’m just delighted for the players and I’m very proud of that performance, especially in the second half.

“I think we had lots of territory and possession in the first half but I gave the players a bit of a bollocking at half time, just for a change, because we weren’t playing rugby, we weren’t seeing where the space was and we were slowing down the ball when we should have been speeding it up. But we improved in the second half and did enough to deserve the win.”

Gala have surprised a good many this season already and they added Ayr to that long list yesterday afternoon. The men in maroon were hungrier in defence, especially around the fringes, and they looked slicker in the backs. George Graham Jnr bossed things from the base of the scrum and stand-off Lee Millar kicked the points when the opportunity arose and walked away with the man-of-the-match award for his efforts. Gala even bossed the set scrums and just about the only respite Ayr found was in the driving maul. They marched several back half the length of the pitch or so and they scored their only try with one from a five-metre lineout.

After two consecutive cup wins, Ayr will look back on this match and know that they contributed to their own downfall. They sometimes relish their bad boy image but their hopeless indiscipline yesterday meant that they were comically unable to keep 15 players on the field.

Not one, not two, but three yellow cards were flashed at Ayr players and not one of them was an intelligent swap, ten minutes on the bench to prevent five points on the score board. Replacement winger Andrew Wilson was only on the field for ten minutes before he was trudging back to the sidelines for a dangerous tackle on Craig Robertson.

Gala had a card of their own but still Ayr played 20 minutes of the match understaffed and they conceded 13 points while doing so. In addition Ross Curle looked the most dangerous back on the field but Ayr’s big men simply couldn’t secure the quick, quality ball the centre needed to make his mark.

The match wasn’t a classic, undermined by a persistent drizzle that fell throughout the second half and by an over-fussy referee who was a little whistle-happy.

There was a neat symmetry to the scoring in the first half, which went along the lines of anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-better. Gala stand-off Millar opened the scoring with a penalty and Ayr responded through the boot of Ross Curle a little later. The same man was then sin-binned for repeatedly creeping offside and Gala immediately took advantage of the extra man to score through winger Craig Robertson after sending skipper Opeta Palepoi on a charge into the midfield off the back of an attacking lineout. That came around the half-hour mark but, before half-time, the referee evened things up by flashing yellow at Gala prop Ewan McQuillin. Ayr kicked to the corner and they, too, utilised the extra forward by bullying their way across the line with Zimbabwe’s international prop Denford Mutamangira being credited with the score.

Both tries were converted, which left the sides level pegging at half time with ten points apiece, and Gala must have wondered why they weren’t two scores to the good with all the territorial advantage they had.

Millar saw the ball bounce back into play after hitting the crossbar from 48 metres early in the second half but the stand-off made no mistake with three more penalties from 55 to 66 minutes.

The Borderers added the icing on the cake when McQuillin was driven over from short range and, with the introduction of the last unused substitutes, the Gala players and their coach were able to savour the final few minutes.

Scorers: Gala: Tries: Robertson, McQuillin. Con: Millar. Pens: Millar 4. Ayr: Try: Mutamangira. Con: Fergusson. Pen: Curle.

Gala: McLean, Young (Dods 75 min), Turner (Hunter 65 min), Emond, Robertson; Millar, George Graham; Pettie, Anderson, McQuillin, Weir (Borthwick 65 min)(Keddie 75 min), Palepoi, Gary Graham, Lowrie (Marshall 70 min) Dods.

Ayr: Anderson, Manning (Wilson 40 min), Curle, Stewart, Taylor; Fergusson (Diaz 67 min), McConnell (AJ McFarlane 56 min); Mutamangira (Sykes 73 min), Fenwick, Sykes (Kelly 27 min), Sutherland, White, Willis (Doneghan 67 min), Colhoun, Dunlop (Fisken 60 min).

Referee: James Mathew. Attendance: 5,333.