CHIPPENHAM Town suffered their third defeat in a row in all competitions after going down 3-0 away to St Albans City on Saturday.

Mike Cook’s men suffered a poor day at the office as Joe Hanks saw an early penalty saved and the home side went on to punish their visitors for three mistakes through goals from Zane Banton, Mitchell Weiss and Shaun Jeffers.

Despite ultimately crashing to defeat, it was Chippenham who started the better of the two sides and were presented with an opportunity to open the scoring within five minutes of kick-off.

An effort from Ryan Brunt from the edge of the box was deemed to have been blocked by the arm of Munashe Sundire by referee Steven Hughes, who pointed to the spot.

Joe Hanks stepped up and drove his penalty down the middle, only to see the outstretched leg of Rihards Matrevics divert the ball away from goal.

The visitors were made to rue that miss just ten minutes later as St Albans took the lead through Zane Banton.

Sundire’s ball into the middle was palmed straight to the feet of Banton by Will Puddy, who calmly slotted the ball into an unguarded net in the 15th minute.

The visitors were next to go close as Hanks headed goalwards, but it was a comfortable save for Matrevics.

But on the brink of half-time, City dealt the Bluebirds a significant blow as they grabbed their second of the game.

Kyran Wiltshire, Jeffers and Weiss combined down the right before the latter sprung the offside trap, latched onto a through ball and rounded Puddy before finishing from a tight angle.

Chippenham almost pulled one back seconds after the restart in freakish circumstances when Kieran Parselle’s emphatic clearance from just inside his own half had to be tipped over the bar by the home stopper.

City’s captain Tom Bender was forced into a spectacular block in his own goal mouth with less than fifteen minutes remaining, and with that, Chippenham’s chance of getting anything from the game had passed.

St Albans then rubbed salt into the wounds in added time after a mistake from Puddy.

The Chippenham stopper received a pass which he miscontrolled, and after pressure from Banton, Jeffers was on hand to squeeze the ball just inside the post from outside the box.