IT WAS one of the lowest moments of my career when City got turned over by a team of semi-pros.

We might have stormed it in the league in that 1985 season but losing in the FA Cup to Telford really hurt. It was a classic case of never counting your chickens.

My introduction to the FA Cup that year was against Tow Law Town, Chris Waddle's old club.

They'd come down from the north east and nobody knew anything about them. We were going great guns at the time and thought it was a foregone conclusion.

But we were also a young team and a bit headstrong and they had a few lads older than us. That was our warning in not taking anything for granted.

It ended up 7-2 but it was closer than that because we had a wobble during the game. We were always going to score but we had an off-day at the back.

The saviour that day was Don Goodman coming on. It was a sticky pitch – a real leveller – but he turned the game for us with a wee bit more pace through the middle.

We'd had Bobby Campbell and Jon Hawley up there, two more static strikers, and bringing on Don was like letting a dog off a lead. That was the first time Don really came to the fore and he finished with a hat-trick.

We got away with it that day but then we had to go down to Telford in round three.

The game should never have been played because the pitch was frozen. Nobody thought the ref would allow it.

But they had let some of the crowd in before the inspection, so they went ahead.

It was that bad that we couldn't wear proper boots and Telford turned us over. It was a case of who adapted to the conditions better and they had the correct footwear because they were at home.

It was the only time I was done in a giant-killing by a non-League team. It was humiliating.

Myself, Greg Abbott and Martin Singleton came from Coventry and we used to go back down there for the occasional weekend.

I went to the local pub on a Saturday night and all the locals were ripping in to me. It wasn't nice.

I was one of those who would analyse games and be really down when we got beaten. It really hurt my professional pride and it nearly led to a bit of bother because it hurt so much.

It was the conditions that did us that day but, more often than not, the reason you lose to lesser opposition is that you've not prepared yourself properly.

You've got to remember it's their cup final and if you're not right in the head, you'll get frustrated and that's when things can go wrong.

But I'm sure Phil (Parkinson) will make sure City are ready to treat Dartford the same as any other team when they come to Valley Parade on Sunday.

From a manager's point of view, Phil will remember the team talks he gave against Arsenal and Aston Villa. This is the flip side of this and you can guarantee the Dartford boss will be winding up his troops because they've got nothing to lose.

Shocks do happen – you've seen that in the first round with the likes of Coventry, Exeter, Southend, Portsmouth and Stevenage all going out to non-League teams.

City need to be focused and right on their game to make sure they aren't added to that list.

* John Hendrie, who works as a consultant for LawBlacks.com, was talking to Simon Parker