Albury Thunder produced its best pressure performance since the 2014 premiership in ending Wagga Brothers' red-hot run on Saturday.
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The home side trailed by 10 points late in the first half and looked set to be knocked out, but rattled on 32 unanswered points for a stunning 38-16 win in front of a big and loud crowd.
"There were some areas in that first half that let us down, our ball control and some penalties late in the count that gifted Brothers possession," Thunder coach Adrian Purtell said.
"We worked on shifting their forwards and I thought our forwards really bought into that, they moved the ball quite well between themselves and the backs also moved the ball around really well."
The first 30 minutes gave no indication of the final result.
When Thunder went into attack, it struggled to score, but when the visitors pushed forward, they couldn't be stopped.
Brothers had eight wins from their last nine games - although they were missing key playmaker Dylan McLachlan - and a neat backline movement allowed Keifer Power to cross for an easy try.
And it looked ominous midway through the half when Brothers scored another simple try when Liam Carey barged across.
Handling errors were killing the home team, but halfback Robbie Byatt imposed himself with a crashing 15m burst, beating three defenders to open the scoring.
However, Brothers restored their 10-point break when coach Peter Little cruised through out wide and drew the defence to send Harold Kirby over for a 16-6 lead.
Another try would have probably delivered the knockout blow, but a clever Byatt pass put Purtell into a gap and when he was tackled the busy Byatt fired a 20m pass to Liam Wiscombe, who crashed over to reduce the margin to six at half-time.
Thunder held the visitors out for two sets of six with the club's superior fitness starting to take a toll with a long Purtell pass putting Curtly Jenkinson over in the corner.
The momentum had turned and Keanau Wighton grabbed the lead for the first time with a 50m intercept try.
Hooker Joe Lumb burrowed over at the 27-minute mark for a 10-point lead and Jon Huggett sealed the win when he crashed over five minutes later.
The second half rampage seemingly came from nowhere, with Thunder to meet Tumut in Wagga on Saturday.
