Let’s not beat around the bush; South’s M2s are in a sticky patch. After last week’s second half collapse, we travelled up to Peterborough keen to get back to winning ways.

Pre-match arrangements had gone like clockwork until the goalie kitbag was unpacked at approximately 9.55 (the game being due to start at 10am). With Lino away this week, it fell to Cooper to discover that only a solitary kicker was included (most goalies, I understand, tend to go for one on each foot). Some good news? Peterborough could send a car to a nearby garage to source a pair! Some bad news? That’d take 20 minutes and the 10am start time needed to be adhered to.

In the meantime, it was hop-along goalie or no-goalie. We chose the former but, sportingly, Peterborough didn’t rain down the shots in the opening period. Shortly after the arrival of the balance of the kit, Cooper was able to extend the new left kicker to good effect, coming up trumps in a one-on-one after an attempted crossfield switch by Jack Robertson had gone a bit wrong.

South were having the better of the game, on balance, with Anns and Kern looking solid at the base of the team. New boy Chris Matson was getting involved down the left hand side and linking well with Man of the Match, Chris Walsh.

Despite the fantastic approach work, with the ball being moved on nice and early before the home side could come crunching in, a goal never came. There were some near misses, and a couple of shorties thwacked just wide of the left post (even the ones we tried to aim at Russell coming in from the right), before Peterborough sneaked one in with relative simplicity.

The second half followed much the same pattern, with both teams guilty of missing an open goal. Nelson’s sin-binning made it a little harder for us to build up a head of steam, but even so this was definitely a game we felt we could have comfortably got points from.