The Crusades to the Holy Land were, eventually, fruitless; Nazi Germany's invasion of Russia proved foolish; and Richard Branson's excursion around the world in a hot air balloon went down like, well, a lead balloon. Now, Saturday's trip to Dagenham can join this prestigious group.

The sad fact is that it was inevitable. We've never had the best of records at the Glyn Hopkin Stadium. I've seen us play four times down there and we've lost on each and every occasion.

There's a simple formula as to why. The pitch is unnaturally narrow, meaning that it is difficult to implement any sort of passing game. Predictably, we could barely string two passes together.

Just 10 minutes in and it became clear that our creative players, Garry Thompson and Carl Baker, were going to struggle to have any sort of positive impact on the game. We might have been better served to have lined up with 4-3-1-2 formation, adding Garry Hunter to aid what was a rather passive midfield.

It was there that Dagenham were able to take control of the game. Stewart Drummond and Craig Stanley were mere passengers, watching Dagenham's combination of Peter Gain and Glen Southam permeate them with ease.

It was precisely our negligence in midfield that led to the first goal.

Gain picked the ball up in a seemingly harmless position but faced no kind of challenge and was able to give the home side the lead with more than a little assistance from Shwan Jalal.

Jalal's error is destined to make those nauseating football blooper DVDs but it definitely didn't offer any humour to the impressive number of travelling away fans; The entire 90 minutes was about as entertaining as having all your limbs slowly removed to a Spice Girls cover of Stairway to Heaven. But brief respite came at halftime in an 'incident' between Dagenham keeper Tony Roberts and the directors' box.

I'd hazard a guess that Roberts probably wasn't reciting Tibetan poetry which caused the resulting handbags but it was certainly entertaining nevertheless. Not content with that, Roberts went on to perform a couple of feigned dives to wayward Morecambe shots before the clinching goal saw his masterpiece; a beautifully controlled roly-poly.

As you may have sensed from my tone, Roberts' antics were truly the only memorable events from an otherwise instantly forgettable day.
Perhaps we had one eye on Tuesday night, or just severely missed Jim Bentley but we can little afford to play like that again. If we do, a second Wembley trip will evade us.