Romsey booked their place in the third round of the Powergen Junior Vase, but the 19-15 win over local rivals Trojans was far from being a classic and the visitors relied upon two breakaway tries to seal their success.

In a scrappy early morning kick-off, brought forward because of England's World Cup group match in Perth, both sides seemed like they were struggling out of bed as Trojans lacked communication in their back division, while Romsey's penalty count when it mattered was crucial.

However, Romsey did have the lynchpin in the returning Adam Trotman. The Cardiff University student, in his first game for the club this season having been an integral part of their promotion side from last, scored the first and set up the second of his side's three tries.

He was at the centre of much of their play, taking the game to the home side but, as former club captain Chris Geyton felt: "We were beating ourselves by giving so many penalties away. We only played for the last ten minutes when we really had to."

It was Trojans' third consecutive defeat and coach Pete Surtees sighed: "It was another one of those days. We played all the rugby but made silly mistakes and that cost us."

Southampton captain Tony Cador has never known the grounds as hard as they are at present and he put that down as the reason behind his side's lethargic performance in beating New Milton & District 32-0.

"We were terrible," he admitted. "We only scored three tries in the last 15 minutes which made the result look better than it was."

They scored four tries in total with Ben Sadowski playing superbly at outside centre and contributing 17 of the points. "It was good to get the game out of the way," added the skipper, who can perhaps see a good run in this competition on the horizon.

Despite scoring three tries to Nomads' one, Eastleigh still went out of the competition to the unbeaten Portsmouth based side in an exciting if scrappy contest by the odd point in 31.

In a game that the Eastleigh forwards dominated, their kicking at goal in conversion of the three tries from Joe Butler, Arnie Payne and Neil Ashton went awry as Nomads' James Hardy made no mistake in scoring all of the home side's points.

But had the referee spotted a knock-on late on with Eastleigh throwing everything into attack, the result might have been different. As it was, Nomads held out and their unbeaten run extends to eight games.

Fareham Heathens' injured skipper Mark Dunning was very pleased with his side, despite them going down 31-13 to London Division Four South-West outfit Old Emanuel in their re-arranged game played yesterday.

Having turned around 26-0 at the interval, Heathens scored twice in the second half through Barry Mohamid and Nick Bowden and won the period 13-5. "We paid them more respect than they deserved," Dunning said.

Elsewhere, Isle of Wight moved through on their hectic day by beating Old Brightonians 19-10. An early start at the ferry terminal culminated in their 80th anniversary ball back on the Island in the evening, so the result went down well in celebration.

United Services bounced back from their Romsey shock by sending Sussex Division One pub side Norfolk Arms out 20-14, but Old Walcountians ended Alresford's good run by running out 19-7 winners.

Aldershot & Fleet and Ellingham & Ringwood decided against their respective trips to Dorking and Hove, gifting their hosts walkovers.