Oxford City Stars won 5-0 at Chelmsford on Sunday, beating a team that was only four points behind them in the league, with a game in hand before the match.

Stars took their strongest squad for some time with only James Cameron (suspension) and Steve Slater (injury) missing, while Jeff Sinnott made his debut.

The game was close fought in the early stages with Oxford using three lines of players and rotating spare players onto the third line as well.

While both sides had chances, the netminders were both in fine form, and the first break came with no score on the board.

The second period saw Oxford gain control and Ben Lay scored five minutes into the session, when set up by Steve Cameron to put them ahead.

Two minutes later, Alex Eberhardt burst through and put a shot between the keeper's legs for Stars' second, Pete Taylor getting his first assist of the season on this goal.

Oxford played out the rest of the period reasonably comfortably, despite some late Chelmsford pressure, to go into the second interval with a 2-0 lead.

The Chieftains kept battling, but early in the third period Oxford made things look more comfortable when Kris Abbott put a wristshot into the top corner after a sweet passing move involving Derek Flint and Glen West.

Stars stayed on top for much of the period, although Chelmsford never gave up, and late in the period, when Stars were playing some exhibition stuff, Abbot scored a solo effort, cutting back and squeezing between two Chelmsford defencemen before flicking the puck past netminder Wilcock.

Oxford were maintaining possession and spraying passes rink-wide with Chelmsford chasing shadows.

In the final minute of the game, Paul Donohoe broke down the right wing, and as the Chieftains defence went with the forwards bursting in on goal, he picked out Ade Haigh following up behind, who launched the puck high into the net to put a seal on the win.

Matt Cameron picked up the player of the match award, as he turned aside 36 shots for his shutout, including several fine saves.

Stars scorers: K Abbott 2+0, A Everhardt 1+1, P Donohoe 0+2, B Lay 1+0, A Haigh 1+0, S Cameron 0+1, G West 0+1, P Taylor 0+1, D Flint 0+1.