Peterborough RUFC take heart from loss to title favourites, Peterborough Lions beaten, but Oundle remain perfect

​​​Peterborough RUFC put up a good fight before slipping to a 38-20 loss to title favourites Lutterworth in Regional Two Midlands East.

Head Coach Sam Crooks can be happy with his young side, as they dominated large parts of the game and made their much fancied opponents work for everything.

Lutterworth started brightly and raced out to a 10 point lead through a converted try and penalty kick. Borough were soon hitting their stride and dominated possession and territory for the rest of the half. After sustained pressure, fly-half Byron Van Uden threw an excellent miss pass which found Harry Anderson out wide who raced in to score a try. Borough threw everything at the visitors but couldn't add any more points and Lutterworth had a 10-5 half-time lead.

Borough then started the second half in perfect fashion with Van Uden offloading to Tshepo Mooki who raced up field drawing in the last defender and passing to No.8 Alfie Lewis who raced into score. Lutterworth began to show why they have been runners-up in the league for the last two seasons as they went on to score four tries to take the game away from Borough.

Borough didn't give up and scored a penalty kick then had the last say in the game with hooker Sam Hughes scoring a converted try to bring the game to an end. Despite the loss, the young Borough side could be proud of their efforts.

Director of Rugby Shane Manning said: “Yet again we can’t fault the effort of the lads. Lutterworth are a good side, but we dominated a large part of the game and just couldn't finish off some of the opportunities we created to score.

“There were some really good individual performances. "Sam Hughes did really well in his first game at hooker, Alfie Lewis is getting better with every game and Tshepo Mooki was at his best and was a real handful for the Lutterworth defence all game. The lads have a week’s rest now before we travel to Market Bosworth, and we will put pressure on ourselves to get a positive result in that game.”

Borough are second bottom, while Bosworth are without a win and bottom.

ROUND-UP

Peterborough Lions went down 52-25 to Vipers at Bretton Park.

Oundle are second in Regional One South East. They made it four wins in four games with a hard-fought 21-13 win at Shelford last weekend. Matthew Waring, Will Cardall and Harry Winch scored the tries with Ben Young slotting three conversions.