Peterborough II 0 Dev Squad 82 (written by Nigel Jones)

 

With a squad of 22 players and no late cry offs the Development Squad headed off to Peterborough for their final game of 2011 against Peterborough 2’nds.

Sadly. on arrival Peterborough found themselves reduced from around 30 on Thursday night to 13 on the day but with enough spare players, Jamie Cohen and Alex Greenberg donned the home team shirt to make sure that the game was played. Ollie Hardwick later in the game found himself playing for Peterborough when one of the Peterborough props had to retire injured.

After a number of weeks of woeful rugby, it was good to finally see the Development team  return to something like the levels reached earlier in the season. Granted Peterborough were not quite at the same level as our normal league opposition, but it was good to get a good performance under the belt prior to the Xmas/New Year break.

The final score was incidental suffice to say that ref blew the whistle slightly early; keeping a clean sheet was reassuring as Peterborough did have a number of phases where the Shelford defence was tested and in contrast to previous weeks where we have let in easy scores and gone on to lose games that we should have won, this time the defence was resolute and combined with a number of turnovers at the breakdown, Peterborough found themselves with little opportunity to trouble the score sheet.


With a number of new players in the squad and guys back from Uni making great contributions on the day, the early ko and somewhat earlier finish ensured that the players were able to get back to the club for the Xmas party in good time.

Next game will be somewhat more difficult as we travel to Rosslyn Park on 14 January for our first league game of the New Year.