PROP forward Aston Bevans-Royston was left ruing what he felt was a huge missed opportunity for Southend Saxons at Cambridge in National Two South on Saturday.

After recovering well from a shocking start, Saxons dominated large spells of the game.

But a last gasp try from Corey Hircock swayed the match in Cambridge’s favour and left Bevans-Royston a frustrated figure at the end of the game.

“We went 19-0 down after 20 minutes and at that point it seemed like we would be in for a very long afternoon but after that we dominated the game and it was very frustrating to lose,” said the 25-year-old.

“We felt the game was ours to lose to be honest and when we got it back to 19-19 we had a few chances to get ahead with tricky kicks that narrowly missed.

“We also had a player knock the ball on in a try scoring position, so it really does feel like a missed opportunity if I’m honest.”

To make matters worse for Southend, relegation rivals Lydney won 19-10 at Clifton.

And Bevans-Royston believes Saxons, who are just three points above the drop zone, are now under added pressure to perform.

“Lydney got a good result and that, of course, puts more pressure on us,” said the prop forward, who scored one of Southend’s two tries at Cambridge.

“It's really tight down the bottom but we have the players to get ourselves out of trouble.

“The 60 minutes against a very good Cambridge side shows what we can do to teams but we need to do it for the full 80, beginning with this Saturday’s game at Dorking.”

Southend will certainly need to start better at the weekend too after being slow out of the blocks against Cambridge.

Tom Ellis, Pete Kolakowski and Martin Wolfenden all crashed over for tries while Jim Wigglesworth added two conversions to make it 19-0.

Saxons got back on to the score-sheet with three penalties from fly-half Brad Burr which cut Cambridge’s lead to 19-9 at half-time.

After the break, Southend began to pile on the pressure and an early exchange of passes gave James Kellard an unopposed run to the line.

But, just as he strolled between the posts, the ball inexplicably fell from beneath his arm and seven points went begging.

Despite penalty points also being spurned the forwards kept at it and were finally rewarded with a push over try from Bevans-Royston.

Moments later, second row Sam Fombo ran round the blind side and touched down to make it 19-19.

Despite their best efforts, Southend could not get over the try-line again and Burr was unable to kick the penalties that came his way.

Those missed opportunities proved costly deep in to stoppage time when Hircock skipped through to score the game’s decisive try which Ben Penfold converted to complete a miserable afternoon for Saxons.

Southend Saxons: Meads, Driver, Gay, Vaughan, Cleare, Burr, Taylor, Fardell, Ferrier, Bevans-Royston, Chesney, Fombo, Hudson, Kellard, Legge

Replacements: Bloomberg, Shields, Guess, Ashton & Nash