Looking a mere shadow of the side that was going so strongly only a month ago, Braintree saw their diminishing promotion chances take a knockout blow when they were well beaten by fellow contenders at Oxford.

This was a game Iron just had to win if they were to retain any hopes of moving up to the Premier Division next season.

Iron's recent lack of success has seen only two points gained from the last six games.

This disappointing run has taken its toll as was clearly evident at Oxford.

The only area where Braintree did reasonably well was in defence, and in the first half, particularly, the back line did a good job in face of strong Oxford pressure.

John Cheesewright also played a big part in keeping the home attack at bay and two early saves to deny Oxford's Chris Ferdinand were top class goalkeeping.

Such was City's dominance that Braintree's midfielders were having to drop back to reinforce the defence, with the result that there were few opportunities to set up counter attacks.

Consequently there was never much threat from Braintree, apart from a good long range effort by Nicky Smith just before the interval and Iron's best hopes seemed to depend on keeping the scoresheet blank.

This they were able to do until the break, but immediately after the game resumed Oxford opened the scoring through Justin Lee and this was virtually the beginning of the end for Iron.

For a time there was some further resistance with Hunter, Bishop and Tanner all doing their best at the back, but eventually Oxford got through to get their second goal when defender Cooper came up to head in from a free kick.

Meanwhile, Gary Ben-nett was forced to retire clearly unfit to continue and Paul Rippingale was also withdrawn as Braintree tried to find extra pace up front but without success.

There was just one occasion when Iron might have pulled a goal back with Stef Kendall having a good attempt blocked and from the rebound Terry Rayner's shot was deflected for a corner.

Oxford added a third goal in injury time when McCleary got through almost unchallenged to complete another unhappy afternoon for Braintree.

Braintree: Cheese-wright, Hunter, Tanner, Vincent, Bishop, Smith, Gunn, Bell, Bennett (Rayner), Kendall, Rippingale (Forbes). Substitute: Cowan.

Forthcoming fixtures: Saturday, March 20 v Leatherhead, away, Ryman League, 3pm; Tuesday, March 23 v Halstead Town, away, East Anglian Cup, 7.30pm.

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