Bath City 3 Braintree Town 2: Bath City manager Adie Britton still maintains his side have a chance of ma king the play-offs after watching them extend their unbeaten run to six matches with a victory over Braintree.

He said: "We have got five games left. If we were to win all five we would have 74 points and we would be very unlucky not to get into the play-offs with that."

For City, all the action came in the first half. It started on 21 minutes when Joe Bruce, under pressure from Dave Gilroy, handled the ball in the penalty area.

Referee Andrew Newell had no hesitation in awarding a penalty, which Gilroy easily converted.

Braintree, who had yet to have a shot on target, got back on level terms when City failed to clear a Louis Riddle corner and the ball fell kindly to Danny Hockton, who scored with a shot through a crowd of players.

However, Gilroy's penalty had clearly stimulated the City forward as he began to cause the visitors defence all manner of problems.

In the space of four minutes he had added two more goals to his tally.

The first came when Sekani Simpson headed a ball on and Gilroy fired across the visiting keeper for his second goal of the afternoon.

Six minutes before the interval, Gilroy completed his hat-trick as he picked up the ball from Scott Rogers before scoring decisively in the bottom left-hand corner of the net.

"Gilroy got his confidence going and then he started to link-up play," said Britton. "He took his second goal really well and it wasn't an easy chance.

"The third was a great move, he's taken the ball down and produced a really good finish."

The only downside to Bath's performance came three minutes from the end when Braintree pulled another goal back through substitute Wayne O'Sullivan.

"Suddenly everyone was on the back foot," said Britton, who saw his side concede two late goals on Tuesday.

"It was a moment of deja-vu but everyone dug in and we got through it."