Once again, Braintree's banana skin hoodoo struck and their promotion hopes took an unexpected blow with a surprise home defeat at the hands of bottom-of-the-table Wembley on Saturday.

Just when they needed to recover from recent disappointing results, here was an ideal opportunity to restore confidence with a convincing win over the struggling North London side.

But for some strange reason Iron seem unable to take advantage of these situations and here we had another repeat of similar upsets.

Memories such as the FA Cup defeat by Third Division Camberley this season and the unbelievable loss of the Division Two Championship last year, when bottom club Cheshunt won at Cressing Road on the final day, again surface

As on that occasion, the main beneficiaries this time were again Canvey Island who were made a gift of the Championship last season and now take top spot from Iron as favourites to win the title this time.

So where do Iron go wrong? In the past it may have been a degree of complacency that caused their downfall but this is probably not the case this time.

Quite obviously the problem is the current lack of goals from an attack which still has the highest scorers in this division but has failed to find the net in any of its last three games.

It has not helped, of course, that Gary Bennett is still sidelined with a long-term injury and, quite naturally, his absence is being keenly felt.

What Iron needed against Wembley was an early goal to regain confidence but, despite having much the best of the play, the elusive vital strike would not materialise.

After Wembley had posted early warnings with a couple of lively raids Braintree settled to take midfield control for long periods with plenty of possession.

The approach work was always promising but time and again failed to deliver the final ball where needed with the result that there were few scoring attempts.

Even so the alarm bells did not start ringing because it seemed only a matter of time before Iron would find a way through although a bit of anxiety did creep in after Wembley had broken out to snatch the lead in the 35th minute.

A quick counter-attack by the visitors caught the Braintree defence exposed on its right flank with a long ball from Davis Haule sending Leon Callender through to win a race with goalkeeper Cheesewright and find the net just inside the post.

About the only Braintree scoring effort of any substance came shortly before the interval from Simon Milton whose long range shot looked on its way until goalkeeper Keith Karamoko made a good save.

And so it continued in the second half with Braintree still in control but unable to unravel a well organised Wembley defence.

Time ticked by with little sign of an equaliser until the last few minutes when a belated rally nearly did the trick with Lee Hunter and Wade Falana both getting in good attempts but all to no avail as Karamoko remained unbeaten, much to the disappointment of a stunned Cressing Road crowd.

Braintree Town: Cheesewright, Hunter, Tanner, Bishop, Cawley, Milton, Smith, Forbes, Greene, Rayner (Falana), and Betson (Vincent).

Forthcoming fixtures: Saturday, March 6 v Romford, Ryman League, at home, 3pm; Tuesday, March 9 v Halstead Town, Eastern Floodlight Competition, at home, 7.45pm.

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