WOBURN — Winning on the road in the Middlesex League is an iffy proposition at best. Add in the fact that Reading was facing one of its biggest rivals in Woburn, and those odds increased exponentially.

The Rockets, however, were having none of that on Saturday.

Dominic Pate scored a pair of second-half touchdowns while the Rockets defense shut down the Tanners after sporting them a second quarter lead en route to a 28-6 win at Connolly Memorial Stadium.

“I’m super proud of the kids and how they continued to fight,” Reading coach John Fiore said. “We had a lot of guys step up and contribute when we needed them.”

The Reading (4-0) defense bent but didn’t break and bowed up when it needed to. Four times Woburn took drives into the red zone and wound up coming away scoreless on three of them.

“We had a couple of good stops down there on the goal line that forced them to kick field goals,” Fiore said.

Each team saw the ball only once in the first quarter. Woburn’s (2-2) initial drive ate up nearly eight minutes but ended with a lost fumble in the red zone.

Reading also turned it over on its first possession when Caedan Davis picked off a Jack Murphy pass and returned it to the Reading 28. Five plays later, Davis capped the drive with a one-yard keeper for a 6-0 lead.

The Rockets then looked like they were going to see a promising drive die when they faced a third and 41 from their 47. Murphy hit Brady Comenos for a 34-yard gain to the Woburn 16. And then followed it with an 18-yard TD on screen to Jake Palm. The two-point conversion gave Reading the lead at halftime.

The Rockets had forced a missed field goal in the final seconds of the first half and got the ball to begin the second half at the Woburn 30 after a long kick return from Sean DuRoss.

Six plays later, Pate raced in from the 12 to give Reading a nine-point lead. The Tanners raced back down field on three completions from Davis (11-of-17, 142 yards) but a holding penalty led to a missed field goal by Shaun Marsh.

Reading took the ball and put the game away with nine straight runs that Pate capped on a 44-yard jaunt down the right sideline early in the fourth.

Ryan Pulpi provided the coup de gras for the Reading defense on the next series when he returned a Davis pass 70 yards for a touchdown to put the game away.

“We were able to capitalize on a couple of the things they were doing,” Fiore said. “I’m just super happy with how they played on a funky schedule week.”