Oakside boss watched his side end a run of nine consecutive defeats

Redbridge joint-manager Dave Ross was beaming with pride after watching his team beat Tilbury on penalties in the Essex Senior Cup last night.

The Motormen took the lead through Joe Gent, but Tony Martin equalised for the Dockers just before half time to make it level at the break.

Carlos Espirito Santo received a second yellow in the 51st minute to give the visitors even more of an advantage.

But the two Ryman North sides couldn’t find the net again and penalties were needed to decide who reached the last four.

Callum Chafer saved one Tilbury effort before Emiel Aiken slotted another wide and Redbridge scored all of there spot-kicks to claim a 4-1 success.

“The boys were absolutely tremendous and if you watched that you would find it hard to believe we are six points adrift at the bottom of the division,” said Ross.

“Everyone put in a shift from the goalkeeper right the way through to the front man and when we went to 10 men, the boys still had the belief that we could go on and win the game and you could see that.

“All we’ll do for the next few days is sit down and enjoy it. You could hear how much it meant to the lads after the match.

“We deserved to have those celebrations after the amount of effort they put in. It would be nice to have that atmosphere a little bit more often so hopefully they take that home and realise how good it is and carry it into Saturday.”

The Motormen had a number of excellent performers against Tilbury and youngster Chafer was impressive throughout.

He made a couple of fine saves in the first half before making a stunning double-stop after the break.

Ross hailed his display and heaped more praise on the rest of his team for making it through against the Dockers.

He added: “Callum had an excellent game and he is a very good goalkeeper, but everybody did well and let’s be honest they didn’t score.

“The only one they scored was an own goal by Goody and it was really a miskick clearance. I’d probably say effort-wise it was our best performance of the season.

“I think we could have even nicked it at times, but I felt like even when we had 10 men they weren’t going to score.

“Callum has had one or two really good saves to pull off, but generally they couldn’t break through our back four. I felt everybody put in a shift and it was a really pleasing performance.”