Hayes' thriller spells despair for Newport

Newport 25 Glasgow 31

After an hour Rodney Parade was in party mood as it seemed nothing could stop the home side from registering their first victory of the season. How wrong the 5,619 fans were.

Glasgow, displaying "a bit of the mongrel'' that their new coach, Kiwi Searancke, had been asking for, staged a dramatic last-quarter fightback that not only saw them overturn a 16-point deficit, but win the game by six points.

Quite how it happened will haunt Newport's new coaches Leigh Jones and Richard Hill. On an afternoon made for rugby, their players did all that was asked of them, except realise that rugby is an 80-minute game.

With three successive defeats in Pool B of the Celtic League, Newport can now write off any hopes of reaching the knock-out phase. Glasgow, on the other hand, can start planning for bigger things, perhaps even going further than the semi-final they managed last season.

If Newport displayed improved form from their previous defeats by Bridgend and Pontypridd, then they were unable to muster the kind of never-say-die attitude that characterised Glasgow's performance. Quite simply, Searancke's men started to dig deep when the going was at its toughest. For that, they thoroughly deserved their victory and are beginning to shape up into a highly competitive outfit.

Having opted to play into the stiff breeze in the first half, Newport would have been delighted to have gone in at the interval 18-9 ahead. After a slow start they finally got to grips with the pace of the game and their two tries were inspired by their former New Zealand scrum-half Ofisa Tonu'u on his return following a summer knee operation.

His between-the-legs flip pass that sparked the move for the first try was a delight and the way in which he posed threat after threat allowed Newport to move forward meaningfully at all times. Andrew Powell was on hand to take the ball from Matt Mostyn to cross in the right corner for the first try and then a break by Jason Strange paved the way for Jason Forster to run in try No 2.

It got better a minute into the second half when Andy Marinos put Rod Snow in the clear for the prop to scuttle his way to the line for a try which Strange improved. Surely that was game, set and match for Newport. Not a bit of it.

Tommy Hayes kicked his fourth penalty and then Glasgow flattened Newport with three successive tries from Hayes, Stuart Moffat and Gordon Simpson to complete a magnificent fight-back.

Newport: S Howarth; M Mostyn, H Luscombe (J Pritchard, 63), A Marinos, A Wagstaff; J Strange (M Pini, 73), O Tonu'u (D Burn, 67); C Jones (R Snow, 21), P Young (J Richards, 56), C Anthony, S Raiwalui (capt), M Voyle, S Ojomoh (A Popham, 56), J Forster, A Powell.

Glasgow: S Moffat; J Steel, A Bulloch (A Henderson, 68), T Hayes, G Metcalfe; C Howarth, A Nicol (capt, G Beveridge, 52); D Hilton, G Bulloch (B Daly, 63), L Harrison, N Ross (A Hall, 56), J White, G Simpson, D Macfadyen (A Wilson, 41), J Petrie.

Referee: A Taylor (Ireland).