Dean Austin was less than enthused with Southend's performance in the final of the Essex Senior Cup, but admitted solid defending saw them through to lift the trophy.

The reserve team manager believes that the Blues rode their luck in the second half and had to put bodies on the line, but having won the competition, he couldn't downplay that at the end of the day a "trophy is a trophy".

"When you get to cup finals you want to win and we have done that," Dean told Blues World.

"I wasn't overly pleased with our performance though.

"We didn't really get it together and I was disappointed with our display in the second half.

"We rode our luck and couldn't keep the ball.

"But you have to give the players a bit of credit as we defended well and got bodies in the way when we needed to.

"In the end, the result was the right result for us.

"Zoltan Liptak has scored a few goals for the reserves from set pieces this year.

"He managed to get one tonight and he could say that he has won the cup for us if he likes.

"I'm not trying to downgrade the competition, but it was another game for us to give first team players coming back from injury the chance to get a game under their belt.

"We also had one or two young boys out there in Johnny Herd and Peggy Lokando and this is going to be a learning curve for them.

"Johnny had a steady game and is going to be a good player for the future.

"We didn't do ourselves justice on the night, but at the end of the day, a trophy is a trophy."