Billericay Town produced a historic afternoon at New Lodge on Saturday as they pulled off their first ever success over a Nationwide Conference side.

They also won through to the last 32 of the FA Umbro Trophy for the first time ever with this overwhelming success over opposition who, just a few short weeks ago, came within 18 minutes of knocking Premiership side Leicester City out of the FA Cup.

Hereford's brave Cup run finally came to an end against the Foxes in extra-time, but here they were powerless to control a Billericay outfit, who found their best form of the season to march into today's fourth round draw, being held at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge home.

It was a quite astonishing performance from the New Lodge side, who had lost seven of their previous nine games on home territory.

Even boss Gary Calder admitted being perplexed by his side's display, which came on the back of a total surrender at home to Ryman League Premier Division leaders Dagenham and Redbridge last week.

He said: "Obviously I'm delighted with the win and our performance, but I'm frustrated as well. How can we play as well as that and yet have struggled so badly in the past couple of months?

"They say that players get managers sacked and you can understand that when you see a performance like that. We did our homework well for this game by having Hereford watched three times and we had three hard training sessions in the week leading up to the game.

"However, at the end of the day it's all down to the players and what they do on the field. Fortunately today they responded superbly. We controlled the game from beginning to end and everyone out there did a great job.

"We never let them play at all and now we must look to maintain these standards."

However, this one-off triumph will not stop Calder from looking to add to his relatively small squad, particularly as he will now miss one of Saturday's heroes, Russell Penn, until the end of the season as he is returning to studies at Loughborough University.

He said: "I've said for a long time now that consistency is what we must aim for and we badly need to add to the line-up in our bid to achieve that aim."

The Conference men proved gallant losers with their manager, ex-Aston Villa and Wolves boss Graham Taylor, making a special point of visiting the Billericay dressing room afterwards to offer his congratulations.

Billericay stormed onto the offensive from the start and Justin Gentle was desperately unlucky to see his diving header hit the underside of the bar as early as the eighth minute.

In almost their first serious attack, Mark Taylor thumped a shot against the woodwork for Hereford after 32 minutes, but Town gathered their resources from this let-off two minutes later when Stafford Browne collected a Dean Parratt free-kick in the box and beat goalkeeper Mark Jones for the opener - his first goal in seven games.

Any thought of the full-time visitors' using superior fitness to take over in the second half were dispelled three minutes after the resumption when Gentle, one of Town's outstanding heroes on the day, ran in Paul Linger's cross from the right for goal number two.

It was almost beyond all home expectations when Town went 3-0 up after 67 minutes with a textbook goal. Browne put Penn clear down the right and, when the Billericay man outstripped highly-rated Paul Parry and crossed, a superb dummy from Lee Williams completely bamboozled the visiting rearguard for Colin Simpson to shoot into an empty net.

Rob Elmes pulled one back for Hereford 15 minutes from time, but it was all too little too late.

The only sad thing was that the official attendance on the day of 757 was far below what had been hoped for - and 400 less than had watched the Dagenham match.

Certainly Hereford brought far fewer fans than had been expected with them - but there's no doubt that many home followers stayed away after that Daggers blow.

On this form they will surely be returning pretty quickly - hopefully at home to Aveley in the hunt for an Essex Senioor Cup quarter-final spot tomorrow night.

Coming through - Town goalscorer Stafford Browne avoids the attentions of two Hereford players

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.