PETERBOROUGH and Tranmere served up the kind of entertainment at London Road that can only encourage supporters to keep faith with watching live League One football in the pressing financial climate.
None of the 5,735 spectators could complain they were short-changed on incident or excitement in return for their outlay of disposable income.
The game held the attention throughout because anyone looking away, even for a moment, risked missing something.
It was also the kind of game that makes managers tear their hair out in frustration. Not all other thrills and spills, twists and turns were the product of good attacking play. Plenty were down to mistakes, gaffes or lax organisation.
Tranmere finished the breathless afternoon with a point and mixed emotions. They had reason to be disappointed, after leading 2-0 on the half-hour mark and creating sufficient chances to win the game at a canter.
But after being pegged back to 2-2 by the 77th minute, they survived enough narrow escapes in front of goalkeeper Danny Coyne during the final quarter hour to be grateful to hear the final whistle.
Peterborough are making a habit of giving their home supporters a roller-coaster ride. The previous game at London Road, against Bristol Rovers, finished in a 5-4 victory and Saturday’s encounter could easily have yielded nine goals instead of four.
Peterborough’s young manager, Darren Ferguson, was less inclined than his experienced counterpart Ronnie Moore to praise the richness of the spectacle and more preoccupied with the frailty of his team’s defending.
Ferguson said: “For 15 to 20 minutes in the first half we were all over the place. The second goal we conceded was awful – horrendous.
“The one thing a manager can’t do is get inside players heads and give them mental strength. Teams that take the right decisions win games and today we made some poor decisions and bad errors.
“That is why we are dropping so many points. No one is playing us off the park. We are conceding unnecessary goals. Fans must think we don’t do any work on defending in training and just tell the players to go out and play. But we do work hard on it.”
Peterborough scored 84 goals in winning promotion from League Two as runners-up last season. Even without £3million-rated front man Aaron McLean, they have enough talent going forward to worry any opposition.
However the spirit of enterprise runs from front to back in Ferguson’s team and there were times on Saturday when the defenders were a little too preoccupied with creative ideas and forgot the basics of denying the opposition opportunities to score.
