City v Chelmsford City Preview

City will be hoping to continue the excellent start to the season when we welcome our old friends from Chelmsford City to Twerton Park on Saturday. With wins over Billericay Town and Tonbridge Angels, plus a trip to Oxford City coming up on Monday, there is the opportunity to achieve the best start to a season for several years.

In contrast our visitors from Essex have not enjoyed such a good start, suffering a 1-0 defeat at Slough before going down 2-1 at home to Maidstone last Saturday.

This will be the first League visit by the Clarets since December 2018 as the scheduled fixtures since then came after the seasons were curtailed. However just prior to last Christmas Twerton did see the two clubs face each other in the FA Trophy, a match played just four days after we had travelled to Melbourne Park.

A remarkable twelve goals were shared between us in those two matches with City ending up victorious on both occasions.

It was no surprise that two of the home goals in Chelmsford’s 4-3 League defeat were scored by Charlie Sheringham, who at the time was on loan from Dartford and has now hit the net against us for four different clubs! He has since made the permanent move to Chelmsford and could well appear yet again on Saturday.

The Trophy match, in which Chelmsford had to borrow our old purple kit, saw City win 3-2 to earn the right to entertain Swindon Supermarine in the next round.

In total the Essex club have made 44 visits to Twerton since their first in 1938. It was a happy hunting ground for them in the post war years but their victory here in 2017 was the only one in the last 12.

Back in the 1950s crowds of over 5000 watched the two clubs meet at Twerton with the largest in recent years turning up for the play off semi final in 2010 when 1425 saw Kaid Mohamed’s and Hector Mackie’s goals give City the advantage in their memorable run to promotion.

Let’s try to top the excellent attendance for the Billericay match and cheer the team on to another victory!