Tries from James Head, Tito Mua (2), Todd Pearce, Nick Beavon, Graeme Dodds, and Peter Eccles, in addition to kicks from Austin Lockington and Richard Mill, gave the Greenyards side a commanding 44-22 lead with just eight minutes of normal time remaining.

However, after making a series of substitutions and losing vice-captain Graeme Dodds to the sin bin, Heriot’s bounced back with three tries in 12 minutes - which included nine minutes of injury time - to score two bonus points to keep them in the title race.

Speaking to the Border Telegraph pitchside after the full-time whistle, Dalziel said: “We should have had that game to bed a lot earlier than we did but happy to get the five points.

“Heriot’s are a fantastic team but I didn’t think they deserved anything out of that game today.

“We came out here with a bit of intent today in every area and I’m just really disappointed with the tail end of it, we should have been put it way out of sight.

“To score so many tries as we did against a team that has been doing so well, if we could have defended a wee bit better at the tail end there we would have got the result we deserved.” Heriot’s points came from tries from Jonno Armstrong, Rory Carmichael, Davy McGregor, a penalty try, James Fleming and Joe Nayacavou, five of which were converted by Graham Wilson who also notched a penalty.

However, their two yellow cards, for Struan Cessford and Jason Hill, proved costly.

Dalziel said: “We’ve had an up and down start to the season but I knew it was there today.

“There has been a lot of chat about them (Gala) at the top of the league and we’ve gone kind of unmentioned, which is a good thing when you’re not performing well.

“We fell into the trap at the end, we knew they had to chase the game and we didn’t deal with that very well.” But, looking ahead to this weekend, he added: “The good thing about that is the players are going to be grounded by that last ten minutes and we’ve got to defend a lot better against Gala because they will be a few notches up from that in terms of physicality.” Melrose: F Thomson; T Mua, B Hutchison, R Taylor, C Anderson; A Lockington, M McAndrew; N Beavon, T Pearce, E McQuillan, J Head, L Carmichael, N Irvine-Hess, P Eccles, G Dodds. Subs: R Ferguson, N Little, R Miller, T Wilson, R Mill.