Canterbury’s three-match winning streak in National 2 South came to a shuddering halt as they allowed hosts Shelford to come from 12-0 down to win 23-12 on Saturday.

The city club had never previously won at the Cambridgeshire side but looked set to do so after dominating the opening 20 minutes.

They created an overlap for the opening try from Aiden Moss and a fine driving maul soon after propelled them 20 metres and over the line with Sam Rogers touching down and Tom Best’s conversion making it 12-0.

They created several opportunities to extend their advantage and the hosts saw a man sin-binned, however Canterbury were unable to capitalise and ill-discipline allowed the hosts back into it.

Shelford missed two penalties through Rory Hutchinson but the fly-half slotted his third attempt to reduce the deficit to nine points at the break.

Hutchinson added two more penalties in the opening 17 minutes of the second half, and playing up the slope, Canterbury’s confidence ebbed away while the hosts’ grew.

The city club lost flanker Brook Cowan to the sin-bin and the hosts took the lead through Ed Mills’ try on 68 minutes after a poor clearance kick followed a timely turnover.

Hutchinson converted the score and then added the extras when Redmond Newberry touched down another score soon after, while Canterbury’s only attempt at closing the gap after the turnaround came from a penalty which was missed, as the city club dropped to sixth in the table.