A star is born under the London Road lights

It was neatly symbolic that Ricky-Jade Jones entered the field of play at exactly the same time as Craig MackailSmith in this FA Cup first round replay.

On came a Posh legend of the past alongside a possible club legend of the future.

Jones is far ahead of Mackail-Smith at this stage of his career. The Stevenage sub was messing around in non-league football until Posh gave him his big break aged 22.

Jones has only just turned 17 and yet his explosion onto the Posh scene is reminiscent of the excitement Matthew Etherington and Simon Davies caused when they were first thrown into the fray.

The local youngster only played for 20 minutes and could have scored twice before he did deliver an expert finish after some fine play from Marcus Maddison in the final minute of a game that proved a lot tougher than it should have been.

Luckily for some the impact of Jones dominated the post-match chatter as Posh were pretty poor for most of the game despite the boost of an early goal courtesy of Mo Eisa’s deadly right boot. That

11th minute strike from 20 yards following Ivan Toney’s chested knockdown of Niall Mason’s long pass should have been the catalyst for a comfortable win against a team who had slipped to the foot of the entire Football League since the first meeting.

But, although they did force some fine saves from visiting ‘keeper Paul Farman and substitute Joe Ward hit a post late on, Posh played so erratically they managed to encourage Stevenage to believe they could grab a third win of a troubled campaign.

Posh did manage to stumble their way to a clean sheet, but for that they can thank goalkeeper Christy Pym who made two excellent stops to thwart Elliott List in the final quarter of the game. Pym dived low to keep out an accurate 20-yarder and then rushed off his line to make a crucial block in the final stages. The game became very stretched after Jones’ introduction and the teenager was thwarted by Farman in his first one-on-one encounter before beating him with a clinical left-foot strike.

It was a goal that lit up London Road on a cold night. All goals are welcome, but goals from locally-reared players are special.

The excitement is similar to when Etherington started playing

Ricky-Jade Jones (37) celebrates his goal for Posh against Stevenage