Saints beat nearest rivals Stewart’s Melville with an impressive away win to take the promotion battle to the wire.
The Edinburgh side opened strongly and shook Saints with a converted try and a penalty for a 10-0 lead within 10 minutes.
Saints didn’t panic, however, and bounced back to steady play to get back into the game in what was an enthralling encounter.
The home side scored another penalty to give them 13 points but Saints’ attacking strength paid off with two great tries from Euan Miller and John Carlisle (converted) to give them 12 points, trailing the home team by only one point at the interval.
Play was again strenuous after the break as the teams battled for league points.
Conditions favoured Saints who cracked the opposing defence for two more tries (one converted) from Sam Hiddleston and Tom Martin. John Carlisle added a penalty to give Saints a final 27 points.
Despite two players being sin-binned and the team reduced to only 14 players for the last five minutes, the young Saints showed maturity to counter the opposition who could only score a penalty and non-converted try and at the final whistle the Dumfries team won by 27 points to 21.
Past president Andy Graham said: “This was the best I’ve ever seen Saints play.
“The entire squad was outstanding. They’re combining well and its encouraging that we‘ve some excellent young players coming through to give the squad added depth of quality.
“We’ve three games to play so it’s not all over yet.
“The most crucial and our remaining hurdle, is our away game with Newton Stewart on Saturday.
“We won by only one point (last kick of the game) at Park Farm in October, so they’ll be out for revenge.
“We must win that game, hopefully with a bonus point, to make promotion near certain. I hope we can encourage lots of our regular supporters to travel to cheer the team on.”
Saints’ four tries extended their try-tally to a remarkable 28 in their last six matches and are well placed to win promotion.
“If we win the others, we’ve every chance of going up. If Stewart’s Melville are going to top us, they need bonus-point wins for all of their four remaining matches.”
