ALAN Griffin fired in his 20th goal of the season last Saturday but it didn’t offer much consolation for the Bluebirds’ top scorer in the thrashing at Brackley Town.

The striker has been in good form in front of goal this season and his second-half penalty reduced the deficit in Northamptonshire.

But Griffin says that goalscoring chances are becoming a rare commodity for out-of-form Chippenham.

“In every game, I go out to try and do the best for the team and it’s my job to score goals but at the moment, we’re not creating chances,” he said.

“If I’m scoring goals, we’re doing better but at the moment, if anyone’s scoring goals, we’re doing better.

“As a team, we’re not creating that much and we’re conceding goals, which isn’t a good recipe for winning football games.

“It was an unusual performance because we rolled over in the second half and let them get goals that we wouldn’t usually concede.

“Obviously with the run we’re on and when we’re 2-0 down and they’re buzzing, it’s hard to keep going.

“But it’s no excuse, we should have worked to the last minute and we obviously got what we deserved.

“We gave them some soft goals and we just weren’t hard enough to play against.”

Griffin thinks the loss of key players has had a big part to play in the Bluebirds’ recent slump.

“We’ve lost a couple of key players like our goalie Puds (Will Puddy), who’d been brilliant and (Lewis) Powell, who was just coming in to form and gave us other options up front that we maybe haven’t got at the moment,” said the striker.

“When we got on a run where we were winning, we always thought we were going to win and now we’re on a run where we’re losing, it’s massively hard to get out of.

“We’ve still got games to play so we’ve got to stick together and try to get back to the way we were playing before Christmas.”

The hosts were clinical going forward and Adie Mings’ side also ended with 10 men after substitute Shaun Lamb was sent off for verbally abusing a match official.

Seven minutes in, the Saints took the lead when the ball broke to Gary Mulligan, who rifled past a helpless Jason Matthews.

Chippenham had chances in the first half, Ross Stearn having a close-range shot saved by Billy Turley and James Guthrie shooting over but any chance of a comeback was dashed within seconds of the restart as striker Steve Diggin produced a superbly weighted lob that looped over Matthews.

In the 63rd minute full-back Eddie Nisevic, who broke Chippenham hearts by scoring the extra-time winner for Nuneaton Town in the 2010 Premier Division Play-Off final, played a low cross into the box which was swept into the net by Glenn Walker.

It was four on 78 minutes as Diggin scored his second.

Soon afterwards, Lamb confronted a linesman and was soon shown a straight red card by referee Anthony Serrano.

Griffin reduced arrears in the 87th minute from the spot, having been fouled himself, but Diggin crossed for substitute Marvin Robinson to head home across the face of goal with his first touch.