Rochford Hundred saw off local rivals Canvey Island 21-10 with a workmanlike performance.

The Islanders, who were promoted from London Three North East last season, provided their hosts with a tough test.

And their early pressure paid off when they were awarded a penalty try which was converted by Ben Chandler to put them 7-0 up after just 10 minutes.

Canvey also felt that the referee denied them two perfectly good tries and the game then became a little fractious with a number of stoppages for some over aggressive play which Rochford suffered worse from when George Chipper fell foul of the referee and was yellow carded.

But the home side responded in just the right manner when hooker Tom Corbet powered his way over the line under the posts for Tom Ashton to convert just as the half time whistle went to make it 7-7.

The second half started with more of the same as Canvey applied more pressure from the scrum and line out, where Rochford did not perform to their usual high standard and gave away too much ball to the delight of Andy Hawes’s boys.

Time ticked by and Rochford lost out as Ross Murphy was sin binned.

However, the appearance of Sam Tape coming on in the second half tightened the line-out and the set scrum became more stable but Rochford still had to endure many minutes of desperate defence.

Gradually the frustration told on Canvey and Rochford’s fast flowing backs got their chance to break away and Aston, Stewart, Needham and particularly Jack Hall on the wing caused all sorts of problems for the stretched visiting defence.

Going into the last quarter, the home side showed that little extra flair and impressive centre Stewart finished off a clever piece of running to score.

Ashton converted and all of a sudden Canvey found they had to chase the game. Canvey reduced the arrears by three points with a penalty from Lee Thorne to make the game tense and the Islanders went for the kill but they could not break Rochford down.

It was again the old story of taking chances when they are presented and that was exactly what Rochford did in the last minutes of the game when stand-off Dan Needham finished off an outstanding afternoon’s work with a brilliant try from deep to run round a tired Canvey defence to score near the posts.

Ashton added the easy conversion and that sealed a hard fought win for Rochford who now travel to Chelmsford on Saturday, while winless Canvey host Old Streetonians.