THERE will be no glitzy prize trip to Las Vegas for the Orient players who have battled and beaten the drop this season.

After Orient got promoted to League One in 2006, the squad was whisked off to the desert playground by chairman Barry Hearn.

Today, there is no such prize for keeping the club in the division, but crucially there will at least be no visits to locations like Aldershot, Accrington or Macclesfield from August either.

“You only get prizes like Vegas for promotion, not survival,” 29-year-old captain Stephen Purches said, reflecting on a topsy-turvey campaign. “Save it for next year.”

Survival is enough, for now.

“Nobody, fan nor player, wants to be part of a team that gets relegated. It’s no different, it’s not a nice feeling,” Purches said. “You don’t want the whole off-season to think about what happened, it can be a long summer."

Purches says he leads on the field by example, not by decibel levels, but he has had a big say in Orient’s own Great Escape.

A solid and industrious right-back presence in one of the division’s meanest defences, he had to endure repeated defeats in the period from mid-December to the start of February, when Orient dipped into the drop-zone and relegation seemed to beckon.

“That run of games when we lost time after time, we would leave the pitch wondering ‘how did we lose that?’" Purches recalled.

“We weren’t playing particularly badly, but for whatever reason, things did not go for us with any mistake we made, or any chance we had in front of goal. We had a couple of games, like the Yeovil match, where we thought the game was sorted out and then there was a late goal or a missed chance.

“But we haven’t conceded that many goals at all this year, so we knew we just had to improve a little bit more up top. We’re a good bunch of lads who care desperately about doing well for the club and ourselves.”

The turnaround came in the shape of Geraint Williams. He was installed as boss for the very next game, and Orient went on a roll which ended in League One safety two games ago with victory over Swindon Town.

A limp 3-1 home defeat to strugglers Northampton ended a five-game unbeaten run, and drew criticism from Williams.

But it was the latest and one of the last chapters of Orient’s erratic campaign.

In the words of the skipper: “It’s been one of those seasons.”