The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Who will join a cast of derby heroes?
Big derby games often throw up unlikely heroes.
Who would have thought that Cambridge United centre-back Lloyd Jones would enter Posh folklore after the club’s first Football League meeting for 21 years earlier this season?
Jones had the misfortune to head into his own net for the only goal of the game at London Road in October.
Posh fans promptly hijacked a Cambridge United poll to find their player of the month for October. Jones was the overwhelming winner.
Jones was as unlikely a hero as Posh centre-back Gary MacDonald who scored the goal in another 1-0 home win at London Road in 2001.
Manager Barry Fry was so pleased with MacDonald he tipped him to play top-flight football.
And Fry was right as two years later, after 16 Posh starts and that one goal, MacDonald was playing in the Conference, the top nonleague division, for Woking.
Posh heroes in Football League matches at Cambridge United are harder to find. Posh have only won twice at the Abbey Stadium in 17 attempts.
Tommy Robson and Richie Barker both scored twice and Jim Hall also netted in a 5-2 Division Four win in 1972. Barker, whose Posh career
wasn’t great, had the honour of scoring his club’s 1000th Football League goal in that match.
And Posh last won a League match at Cambridge in 1988, so 35 years ago, when Mick Halsall, Noel Luke and a home defender scored in a 3-1 New Year’s Day success.
Posh have failed to win in eight attempts since, although there was a memorable 2-2 draw in a second tier fixture in March, 1993.
Posh were safe in the first season in their history at that level, but Cambridge were
battling against the drop.
And the Us stormed into a deserved 2-0 lead before the break.
Tony Adcock pulled a goal back at the start of the second-half and then equalised two minutes from time after a blatant foul on the goalkeeper from Posh midfielder John McGlashan had been ignored.
Posh won the return fixture the following month thanks to a solitary Worrell Sterling goal and Cambridge ended up going down by a single point.
Any Posh player who claims the winning goal in the Cambridge derby at the Abbey Stadium on Saturday (12.30pm kick off ) on Saturday will be an instant hero.
What a time for someone like Ollie Norburn to score his first goal for the club in what would be his 50th appearance.
Of course goalscorers are not the only possible headline makers.
What a story if on-loan Posh goalkeeper Will Norris, who started his professional career at his local Cambridge club and played 93 times before moving to Wolves, delivered a man-of-the-match display.
Similarly Posh will be keen to avoid the possibility of home defender Ryan Bennett becoming the matchwinner.
Bennett was a star of a Posh promotion season in 2010-11 and he’s playing well for Cambridge now at the age of 33 after joining them in January.
Current BBC Posh pundit Franny Green scored in a 4-1 Posh home win in 2001.