Billericay Town kept alive their hopes of winning the prestigious Essex Senior Cup with a 2-0 quarter-final home success over Romford at New Lodge on Tuesday night.

Town continued their recent impressive form in knockout competitions to see off the spirited challenge of their Ryman League First Division visitors.

Now Gary Calder's Billericay visit fellow Premier Division side Purfleet aiming for a final spot.

Billericay took a while to assert their authority last night and Romford had just enjoyed their best spell of the first half when the home outfit went in front.

Gary Price, one of four ex-New Lodge men in the visiting outfit, could only knock a dangerous cross from the right back into the danger area and midfielder Paul Linger turned in the box to beat visiting keeper Jon Rumsey.

Courageous Romford battled hard for the equaliser with most of Billericay's attacks stemming from the tantalising speed and skill of recent signing Joe Baker.

The second goal came 11 minutes from time when Rumsey made a complete pig's ear of controlling a back pass and Lee Williams, who came on as a half-time substitute, gained control of the ball to shoot home from a difficult angle on the right.

It was a fitting farewell for Williams, who misses Saturday's League visit to Canvey through suspension.

Williams is out for one game under the bookings "totting-up" system, and for that reason the Billericay camp will have been less than pleased to see four of their players pick up cautions last night.

Things, however, could have been worse for Billericay.When goalkeeper Gavin King raced out of his area to bring down Romford striker Chris Rose after 58 minutes, visiting fans and officials expected Rochford referee Lee Garrett to produce a red rather than yellow card.

Mr Garrett probably erred on the side of giving the keeper the benefit of the doubt as there were defenders between Rose and the goal.

The other Billericay yellow cards were handed out to Kirk Game, Chris Moore and Dean Parratt, and, in the heat of the battle, both sides indulged in "Leeds v Tottenham"-style free-for-all fracas involving several players on a couple of occasions.

Fortunately the days of action replays and trial by television are still far away from soccer at this level or both clubs could be facing FA misconduct charges!

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.