BURNLEY survived 450 minutes and a week of Ulster rough and tumble without leaking a goal.

But it took Third Division Chester just 180 seconds to breach the Clarets rearguard action at the Deva Stadium last night.

The defensive unit which kept Coleraine, Ards, Glenavon, Glentoran and Crusaders at bay creaked open for grateful striker John Murphy.

Twice he cashed in on first half blunders to pave the way for a deserved Chester success.

Maybe this was a game too many for Burnley. Arriving just 48 hours after the curtain came down on the Clarets Irish tour, the Turf Moor men appeared leg weary and jaded.

In fact, this was Burnley's fifth fixture in seven days - and that is a gruelling schedule by any standards.

But for the 250 or so Burnley fans in a reasonable crowd of 1,059 - this must have proved a little disappointing.

The Clarets were second best to Chester in the first half and, while they improved after half-time, they could not find a way past former Stoke City goalkeeper Ronnie Sinclair. Sinclair - on trial at Chester and in the hunt for a contract at the Deva - was in inspired form. He denied the Clarets with a string of excellent saves.

But, after the success of the tour to Northern Ireland, manager Adrian Heath clearly thought his players could have performed better.

"We were awful in the first half and I'm not making any excuses for that," said manager Adrian Heath.

"We just can't afford to start games like that and to make silly mistakes.

"The mistakes we made for the two goals were like April and May of last season. It was poor.

"Okay, it was the players sixth full senior game in just 10 days - but I'm not going to give them that as an excuse.

"We were poor at times. We allowed Chester to dictate the game too easily and everybody was waiting for somebody else to do something about it.

"But we changed it around a little bit in the second half and we did improve.

"This game has given us another opportunity to prepare the groundwork for August 17 at Luton. That's when the real work begins."

Burnley were caught cold as Chester nosed in front inside three minutes.

Even without the injured Cyrille Regis to lead their attack, Chester were bright and inventive.

And when their opening goal arrived there was an inquest in the Clarets defence.

A deep right wing centre from Iain Jenkins found the 19-year-old striker unmarked on the edge of the six yard box.

He simply picked his spot, heading in between Gary Parkinson and Marlon Beresford.

Even Chester's opener could not really spark Burnley into life, but Sinclair showed his ability by punching away a powerful Steve Thompson free-kick.

Chester increased their lead on the half-hour.

A raking ball from Chris Priest saw Marlon Beresford make a hash of an attempted clearance - and the ball fell at the feet of the grateful Murphy.

He fired in a shot from the edge of the area. The effort appeared to be going high and wide, but the ball dipped into the top corner.

The ecstatic Chester PA announcer could hardly contain his delight. He compared it to Karel Poborsky's winner for the Czech Republic against Portugal in Euro 96!

"It was a bad error of judgement from Marlon for that goal," added Heath.

"He obviously thought the ball was coming through. But it held up and the lad finished well.

"We all had a few words at half-time and I thought we should have scored with the chances we created."

And while Kurt Nogan, Paul Smith and Nigel Gleghorn all went close, it would be wrong to read anything of too much consequence into this result.

With quarter of an hour left Burnley fans got their first glimpse of Malawi international Walter Manta. But by then Kevin Ratcliffe's team had sealed victory.

CHESTER: Sinclair, Jenkins, Rogers, Fisher, Jackson, Whelan, Richardson, Priest (Preece 50), Murphy, Rimmer, Milner. Subs not used: Alsford, Knowles, Woods, James.

BURNLEY: Beresford, Parkinson, Eyres, Harrison (Manta 75), Winstanley, Hoyland (Swan 62), Matthew (Weller 50), Thompson, Nogan, Smith, Gleghorn. Subs not used: Russell (gk), Brass, Proctor.

REFEREE: Mr E Lomas (Blackburn).

ATTENDANCE: 1,057

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.