SUNDAY was anything but a day of rest for Chris Casper as he surveyed the wreckage of his side's fourth successive defeat of the season.

Rock-bottom and without a point, Casper could have done worse but ask for some divine inspiration to help turn round what has been a wretched campaign thus far.

Jermaine Easter did the damage for Wycombe, coming off the bench to score an opportunist hat-trick. But the manner in which the Shakers folded once again in the second half had Casper scouring the dictionary for new words to describe his side's rotten form.

"I thought we were pathetic," was his honest, if rather blunt assessment. "The first half, we were in the game, for the second half, we were pathetic. I haven't got any other words to describe it. I will take the responsibility for it, as always.

"I have to apologise to the 153 fans that have made the four-and-a-half hour journey down here, they backed the team to the very end."

Skipper Dave Challinor and wingers Marc Pugh and Marc Goodfellow were pulled out of the squad after picking up injuries in training on Friday, and Bury's luck hardly improved from there on in.

An early Paul Scott header aside, it was mostly one-way traffic to the Bury goal as Colin Woodthorpe and John Fitzgerald were called upon to make last-ditch tackles on Sergio Torres and 26th-minute substitute Easter.

Will Antwi also saw a header blocked on the line by Nicky Adams on the stroke of half time as the home side increased their grip on the game.

Things hardly improved for Bury as the game went on. Tommy Mooney and Steffen Oakes fired warning shots across Alan Fettis' goal, but it took until just after the hour mark to finally make the breakthrough.

Easter ran on to a long ball over the top to squeeze the ball past Fettis and crush what little confidence the Shakers had gleaned from their stubborn rearguard display.

The same striker repeated the trick 10 minutes later when he ran on to a poor back header from John Fitzgerald to lob the ball over the helpless keeper. He then completed his hat-trick with a blistering right-footed shot.

Shakers: Fettis 7; Scott 6; Fitzgerald 5; Woodthorpe 5; Kennedy 5 (Brass 74); Adams 6; Buchanan 6; Barry-Murphy 5 (Baker 68, 6); Flitcroft 6; Pittman 6 (Youngs 65, 5); Bishop 5. Subs not used: Collinge; Tipton.