It was then the experience of old hands like Kurt Simmonds, Norm Henricksen and Brett Rudman came to the fore with the ball astutely being transferred from hand to hand in close quarters.
That was much to the obvious frustration of the Gladstone backs, who were thirsting for the chance to continue what had become an encouragingly growing habit of breaching the Greytown defence.
Henricksen's influence on the Greytown forward effort was illustrated by the fact that when he was sin-binned in the second half Gladstone scored 12 points while he was off the field. He was his side's best lineout forward and a determined scrapper in the mauls.
There was a lot to like, too, about the mobility and constructiveness of Gareth van Dolen and the aggressiveness of Karn Walker in loose play.
The Greytown backs functioned effectively on attack in the first half with halfback Joseph Sio giving them a flying start and centre Tapaga Isaac providing thrust in midfield.
No doubt coach Robertson will be doing some hard talking to them, though, over the next couple of training sessions about the frailty of their second-half defence with numerous first tackles being missed.
Even with the bitterly cold breeze at their backs in the second half, Gladstone could have looked at the scoreboard and come to the conclusion that overcoming a 20-3 deficit was, at best, a remote possibility.
So their ability to lift their performance and dominate most of the second half in territory, possession and scoring action spoke volumes for their character and resolve.
It was in their rearguard that Gladstone clearly had potential match winners in centre Cameron Hayton and wing Inia Katia.
The hard-running Hayton invariably left two or three defenders in his wake every time he had the opportunity to work up a full head of steam, while Katia might have had the No 11 on his jersey but the more the game progressed the more often he had the ball in his hands.
No Gladstone forward worked harder than Andrew McLean, who was all over the field on attack and defence and still had the energy to shine in the lineouts. Front rower Richard Puddy also had a lively game and big prop James Ross was hard to stop when on the burst in broken play.
Joseph Sio and Karn Walker scored tries for Greytown and Rhys Lett kicked three penalties and two conversions. Hayton (2) and Inia Katia scored the Gladstone tries and Hayton also kicked one penalty and one conversion.
The other Tui Cup semifinal played at Martinborough was a high-scoring affair with East Coast advancing to the competition decider with a 31-20 victory.
As was to be expected, East Coast adopted their usual attacking style of play and, as was also expected, it was Wairarapa-Bush rep Nick Olson who was the danger man.
He scored a hat-trick of tries for the second successive weekend, having also run in three when East Coast beat Bush Sports in the last series of qualifying round matches.
East Coast scored five tries with Michael O'Connor and Bowie registering the other two and Olson also landing three conversions to give him a personal rally of 21 points.
Martinborough were mostly in catch-up mode and played their best rugby during the second half.
Michael Te Whare, Jared Hawklins and Adam Marshall were the Martinborough try scorers with Cody Whittaker landing one penalty and one conversion.
The Tui Cup match between Greytown and East Coast will be the feature of finals day at Memorial Park next Saturday.
