It all started well enough – for just under fifteen minutes, Dagenham took the game to their visitors and could perhaps have taken the lead. It started to turn sour when Danny Shipp, who had incredibly been converted into a midfielder despite his goalscoring record, conceded a penalty and was given his marching orders. Despite the penalty being scored, we held out almost until half-time when two quick goals gave the Bulls a commanding lead at the break.

Trailing by three with only ten on the pitch is never a good position to be in with a whole half left to play. The Bulls managed one goal between minutes 46 and 70, but then the floodgates were well and truly opened. A further five goals in just 18 minutes left Garry Hill’s Daggers tenure in tatters – despite all he had delivered for the club he was disgracefully subjected to personal abuse by sections of the crowd. Five games later he was gone.

Wigan’s hammering last weekend actually took a rather different pattern. They went in at the interval trailing by just a single goal but conceded an embarassing eight in the second half. This included a five-goal haul in just 18 minutes (hmm, sounds familiar) shortly after half-time. You can only imagine sedatives were handed out with the oranges in Wigan’s dressing room!

Perhaps the Latics were fortunate that their mauling wasn’t shown live on TV in England, but there is no escape for any top-flight side these days with cameras capturing every moment. Their humiliation has been broadcast time and time again on various programmes. In our case, maybe we’d have avoided national coverage had Sky not screened the game live, but unfortunately for us every awful moment was seen by football fans throughout the country. Thanks Sky.

Our defeat was actually not a new record for the Conference – in March 1990 Runcorn won 9-0 at home to Enfield and later the same year Sutton United won 9-0 at Gateshead. More recently, in February of this year Rushden won 9-0 at Weymouth but the circumstances surrounding this were rather different. Weymouth’s financial problems had resulted in the players not being paid for around eight weeks and, when they refused to carry on any longer, the youth team were called upon to fulfil the fixture.

One very small consolation is that there are other teams to share the agony – Tim Cole made a superb goal-line block and Roberts made two very good saves to prevent the first Conference double-figure scoreline.

Parratt had never been the slimmest or fittest of players, but he did provide rare glimpses of quality on the ball in what was a very hard-working but limited side. Neither was he as old as he appeared to be – 27 upon his departure – and he went on to play for local sides such as Billericay, Braintree and Maldon. Mitchell came from Heybridge Swifts where he had been signed by Garry Hill, who then apparently had also tried to take him to St Albans. It’s a shame he didn’t succeed and save us all the pain of having to watch him over fifteen long appearances.

He had a 1-in-3 goal record for the Swifts and had previously been with Chelmsford City, Bury Town and Wivenhoe – probably not the sort of list which says that he was the playmaker we required. At 34 years old, he was hardly one for the future either. It didn’t start well for him – in his first friendly against Arsenal, he gave the ball away which led to the visitors’ goal. Being fair, he had a pretty impressive pre-season and managed to look the part, the only trouble was this didn’t extend to league games. His overwhelming need to chip everything, from five-yard passes to shots, became almost like a bad joke seeing as most of the time the ball ended up going off the pitch or straight to the goalkeeper. Not the strongest of players, he also seemed to feel the need to compensate for this by committing as many fouls as possible.

After 13 league games, the Daggers were in 5th having already lost 4 matches. A 1-1 draw at home to Wealdstone seemed to be the final straw and Mitchell found himself out on his ear. A Ryman League Division 2 relegation scrap was probably more his level and he found it with a move to Witham, leaving room in the Daggers squad for the emergence of Paul Terry. He went on to play for the likes of Clacton, Stanway and Heybridge once again. Whilst back at Heybridge, he found himself on the wrong end of a 7-1 pasting in a friendly with the Daggers in 2002, but did manage to win the Jewson League Player of the Season award with Clacton. We assume this is similar in prestige to winning a raffle. He has since gone on to manage Harwich & Parkeston, and Halstead.

Two of those new players were brothers Lenny and Chris Piper. Lenny came with an impressive goalscoring record, having netted 25 in 80 Conference games for Farnborough, and Chris seemingly had a bright future. Garry Hill couldn’t help but laud his captures:

“Lenny I know from my days at St. Albans and has a fabulous scoring rate for a midfielder, regardless of the level, while Chris is clearly going to end up in the Football League. Its great to have them here. I know now I have a better team here than I had at the end of last season.”

It didn’t quite turn out as planned. The fact that Lenny couldn’t break into a side in poor form probably says a lot, but just for the sake of clarity – he made no impression whatsoever. The reason for his midfield scoring record was all too obvious in his fleeting appearances – he didn’t play in midfield, he wanted to play as an extra forward. 15 appearances and absolutely zilch in the way of goal threat later, he packed his bags off to Margate. Just to further emphasise his talents, he later went on to play for such leading lights as Fisher Athletic, Ramsgate and Whyteleafe.

Chris managed to do slightly better than his brother by lasting an entire season. Quite how he managed to get into the side every week is anybody’s guess and says more about the other options than it does about him. As a central midfield player he was light years behind the player we’d allowed to leave, Heffer. Often going missing for large chunks of games and having the physical presence of a small ferret, the one thing he shared with his brother was his inability to make any impact on the game. Predictions of a Football League future were fairly obviously a long way wide of the mark. You can only assume that Garry had given his interview under the influence of methylated spirit.

Chris followed his brother’s lead of moving up the leagues in a negative direction, their apparent inability to go to a club without holding each other’s hand meaning Chris also went to Fisher. Finally getting over this problem, possibly after counselling, Chris was able to go to Braintree without his brother. Robbie Garvey, who took over there after leaving Dagenham’s coaching staff, has sensibly released Chris from the club recently. Expect to see him lighting up a lower division of the Ryman League in the near future, by virtue of his ginger bonce.

The season of the Pipers eventually saw Garry Hill admit defeat and resign, the club finishing in the lower half of the Conference. A season of change turned out to be a season of serious regression, the only saving grace being the fact that new manager John Still shoved most of the season’s circus act out of the exit door.