''It's the worst City performance ever in my two years in charge'' was how the City manager Gary Bellamy summed up this ignominious Easter Monday afternoon defeat in London Docklands.

City have never won at Fisher and the way they played for what was a dreadful 90 minutes of play was certainly not going to break their duck.

''We couldn't pass, trap or control the ball and the longer the game went it was clear we were going home with nothing,'' Bellamy added.

Fisher though, already planning for a serious premier division promotion push next season, having appointed ex-Sittingbourne boss Alan Walker as their manager at the weekend, were lucky to have finished with a full compliment of players.

A much sterner referee would have shown a couple of red cards for what simply were vicious rugby-style tackles on young Tesfaye Bramble, although this was still no excuse for a poor City performance.

Admittedly the playing surface was bumpy, thus making it hard for City to try and play their usual passing game and the conditions also took its toll on certain players, with young Kevin Dobinson forced to retire with damaged knee ligaments and skipper Brett Girling with a thigh injury.

Even the return of Ian Cambridge failed to inspire the side and his frustration boiled over with a second half booking, which was unfortunate in the circumstances.

The writing was on the wall for City within the first minute when Paul Manning saw his shot crash against the woodwork with the defence all at sea.

Shortly afterwards only a good save from City goalkeeper Paul Catley kept the scoresheet blank.

The inevitable happened in the 33rd minute when Anthony Turner had time and space to drive the ball past Catley with the City defence nowhere to be seen.

Otherwise, City's attacks were few and far between while the side, perhaps apart from defender Danny Reeve and midfielder Brian Sutton, hardly distinguished themselves.

They had, at times, to face some crude tackling which went unpunished but that is a fact of life in this lower division which the youngsters in particular will have to learn to live with most weeks.

Chelmsford City: Catley; B Girling (Yamazaki), Reeve, Dobinson (Strong), Wardley (Greatorex); Coburn, Sutton, Lakin, Berquez; Cambridge and Bramble.

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