SOUTHEND Saxons’ director of rugby Chris Green felt his side kept alive their National Two South survival hopes with a dramatic 19-13 win against Launceston on Saturday.

Danny Cleare’s last minute try secured a vital victory for the 14 man Saxons at Warners Bridge.

And Green admitted the effort also still makes it possible for Southend to avoid relegation.

“I think that would have been us gone if we hadn’t have won at the weekend,” said Green.

“But we have to take positives from the way we turned things around in the final 20 minutes.

“We were down to 14 men after Alan Barker was sent off and Chris Vaughan, Craig Strachan, Mark Billings and Harry Hudson – some of our most experienced players – all went off injured.

“But we were still able to score three tries to come back from 10- down and we have to take something from that for the remainder of the season now.

“Our next three matches are against teams in and around us towards the bottom and we need to win at least two of them to stay in contention.”

Saturday’s victory ended a run of three successive defeats for Southend and brought them to within six points of safety with six games to go.

However, the Saxons initially seemed to be heading for another defeat at the weekend when bottom of the table Launceston went in front after 16 minutes when lock Sebastian Hockridge charged through to score and Fraser Honey added the conversion.

Eight minutes into the second half, Southend’s hopes of a comeback were hit by a red card to Barker following a heated fracas between both sides.

Visiting prop forward Nicholas Hocking was bizarrely just yellow carded for his part in the same incident which also led to Honey kicking a penalty to put Launceston 10-0 in front.

But Southend soon hit back with Tom Ashton scoring a try on the hour mark before Reuben Haile touched down seven minutes later for his third try in three games.

Brad Burr’s conversion put Saxons 12-10 in front before Launceston regained the lead with another penalty from Honey.

That seemed to have secured the visitors’ first victory of the season but Southend had other ideas and Cleare touched down in the final minute of the match to sway the clash back in Saxons’ favour.

Burr added the conversion and Southend will now be hoping the win can lead to them working themselves out of trouble.

Southend Saxons: Burr, Billings, Gay, Vaughan, Haile, Ashton, Hoadley, Strachan, Bloomberg, Bevans-Royston, Kirkbride, Smith, Shields, Hudson, Twight.

Replacements: Bailey, Day-White, Barker, Cleare & Daly.