Bath City will take a 2-0 advantage into the second leg of their Blue Square South play-off semi-final at Chelmsford on Saturday.

A Kaid Mohamed penalty and a second goal from substitute Hector Mackie put Bath in control at Twerton Park.

"I'm very pleased with the result although the performance was not what I expected," manager Adie Britton told BBC Radio Bristol.

"That's probably as poorly as we have played in six months."

He added: "At no stage of the game did we get good phases of play together and we didn't keep the ball - we gave it away cheaply.

"But, when all else fails, the one thing we have as a unit is very, very good spirit. We fought for everything and put our bodies on the line but we weren't terribly composed.

"Given the possession they [Chelmsford] had throughout the game, the result was a little bit of a surprise."

Bath were awarded the spot-kick on the hour when Steve Ward was adjudged to have brought down Darren Edwards but the goal did little to settle the home side.

There was more drama for the bumper 1,425 crowd to witness when Bath midfielder Mark Badman and Chelmsford's Ricky Modeste were both dismissed following an off-the-ball clash nine minutes from time.

Mackie then added a second goal, his first for Bath, in the 87th-minute to earn rich praise from Britton.

"Hector caused them a few problems on the break, got in the box in a good position and finished well," said the manager.

"It was a great effort to give us a 2-0 lead which we saw out fairly comfortably in the end.

"But quite clearly it's far from the end of the story. We have an awful lot of hard work to do."

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