Canvey Island are the soccer cup kings of the county. At Roots Hall on Monday night they overcame brave resistance from a basically young Leyton Orient side to carry off the Essex Senior Cup for the first time in their history.

Steve Tilson, back on the Southend United surface which he graced for a decade as a Blues player, was the hero of the night by scoring both Gulls' goals to bring his personal tally to 34 for the term.

As he reflected on another in a long line of superb successes for his side on Monday, manager Jeff King readily agreed: "Tilly was the big difference between the two sides tonight - as he has been so often for us in the past.

"When he parted company with Southend two years ago, Leyton Orient were one of a number of clubs who wanted to keep Tilly in the pro game, but fortunately he decided to come to us and he's been a tremendous asset."

Tilson himself paid tribute to the outstanding youngsters of the opposition side and admitted: "They gave us a really hard game.

"They had some outstanding youth talent out there tonight and that must be good for the club in general for the future.

"Obviously I'm delighted to have come back here and got two such important goals.

"Having already won promotion to the Ryman League Premier Division, we badly want the title now.

"If we win at Maidenhead on Wednesday it's ours, but we've heard our only title rivals, Hitchin, triumphed again tonight and are making it hard for us and there's no such thing as a certainty in football."

With the Orient youngsters understandably showing opening nerves in front of an 800-strong partisan blue and yellow army Canvey crowd, Gulls took a 58 second lead when Lee White slipped while trying to control a Steve Parmenter cross and Tilson gleefully rammed home.

However, for much of the remainder of the first-half, Orient put the Islanders under the cosh.

Sadly, the O's were unable to match some brilliant approach play with good finishing. Brian Horne did make one great save from Danny Curran, but teenage left-sided player John Martin, who otherwise had a brilliant game, missed three clear-cut opportunities on his own.

Curran did level nine minutes before the break and O's seemed set to take control nine minutes after half-time when outstanding Canvey defender Steve Ward was forced to bring down experienced Craig Maskell in the box.

However, Horne atoned for his part in the O's goal earlier with a brilliant penalty save from Maskell.

Canvey grew in confidence from that incident and their victory was seldom in doubt once Tilson had fired them back in front with 25 minutes remaining with a sweetly executed right-foot shot.

Trophy triumph - Canvey Island show off the silverware after their 2-1 victory in the Essex Senior Cup final

Picture: MIKE NEVILLE

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