'There was some really poor decision making' - Falkirk Rugby Cub stalwart Kenny Grieve assesses shock defeat at newly-promoted Berwick

Although James Thompson’s early try put the Borders side 5-0 up, Falkirk hit back with scores by Gregor Ramsay, Stewart McCulloch and Euan Cassells – the first of which was converted by Duncan Tompkins – to race to a 17-5 advantage.

Crucially, Berwick reduced their leeway to five points by half-time thanks to a Nathan Melrose try converted by skipper Jack Webster.

And second-half Berwick tries for James Grieve, Euan Thompson and Ben Nicholson – all of which were converted by Webster – duly won the day to leave Falkirk seventh in the table with five points from three games.

Falkirk director of rugby Kenny Grieve told the Falkirk Herald: “It was a very, very disappointing result. We started off pretty well.

"We had the measure of Berwick quite early, we played to our strengths with the tempo of the game quite high.

"All things were going well but in the second-half we stopped doing what we had been doing which was really bizarre.

"The forwards were still providing a decent platform but we had a bad day at the office with the backs.

"There was a number of dropped passes, a number of offload attempts that were never on.

"We were losing the ball on contact. We turned the ball over 12 times then we gave the ball back to them 12 times just through silly errors.

"There was some really poor decision making as well, going to go wide when it wasn’t on rather than play to our strengths and bring people back up the middle.

"Had we played the way we can play that should have been a 60-pointer for us and we should have run them ragged off the pitch.

"But they dug in, they disrupted, they ran hard at us. We were knocking them down but they just kept going and going.

"They got the bit between their teeth and they got some of the breaks through our mistakes.”

Falkirk are on league duty again this Saturday when they host leaders Glasgow Accies with kick-off at 2pm.

Grieve said: “I would like to think we’ll get a reaction from the players, going hard after them and keeping them at bay.

"Glasgow Accies are a very strong side, very well drilled.

"They beat us twice last year, home and away. If there’s ever a time to prove yourself then what a way to do it than against a team top of the league.

"But we do have a number of concerns with a number of unavailable players and injuries.

"Harry Russell is away with work, as is John Joe Nelson, so both are unavailable.

"Stef Yarrow is on international duty for Cyprus and Duncan Tompkins is away at a wedding.

"We are not scratching the bottom of the barrel but we’re certainly stretching our resources very thinly and making life difficult before we actually get on the pitch.

"It’s going to be a tough day at the office but hopefully the boys will have good training sessions this week, we will discuss a number of things that didn’t go so well and then we’ll actually go out and hopefully play one of the games of their lives.”

At least it was a better weekend for Falkirk 2nd XV last weekend as they won 84-14 at Kirkcaldy.