David Cuffley Defender Adam Drury summed up the sense of shock and embarrassment in the dressing room after Norwich City crashed to the heaviest home defeat in their history, admitting: "We fell flat on our faces.

David Cuffley

Defender Adam Drury summed up the sense of shock and embarrassment in the dressing room after Norwich City crashed to the heaviest home defeat in their history, admitting: "We fell flat on our faces."

The 30-year-old full-back had spoken before the League One opener against Colchester United of the need for the Canaries to give something back to the fans who have packed Carrow Road match after match despite the club dropping two divisions since 2005.

But a shameful 7-1 hammering, eclipsing City's previous worst result on home soil - a 6-1 defeat by Bournemouth on Boxing Day 1946 - represented a disastrous start to life in the third flight for manager Bryan Gunn.

Six wins and a draw in seven pre-season games had raised supporters' hopes and the flag-waving fervour before kick-off would not have been out of place at the start of a Premier League campaign. Then it was downhill all the way from Kevin Lisbie's 10th-minute opening goal, with City 5-0 down inside 38 minutes, a nightmare for debutant goalkeeper Michael Theoklitos.

Former skipper Drury admitted City's display was "unacceptable".

He said: "How wrong was I? At the start of the game, it was brilliant but after that we didn't give the fans anything to cheer about, so they had every right to be the way they were.

"For the first 10 minutes we were in the game and gave ourselves a few chances and put a bit of pressure on, but once you concede goals like that, you're out of the game after 20 minutes. That was game over then.

"We came out in the second half and did a little bit better but still conceded poor goals. Any team that concedes poor goals is going to lose games.

"They were playing with two solid banks of four and we were conceding silly goals left, right and centre.

"We simply weren't good enough. That's all you can say. Through individual errors, and as a team, we've let ourselves down."

Drury admitted it was as bad a 90 minutes as he had experienced.

"Especially as a home game," he said. "We've had some bad ones. I didn't play at Charlton at the end of last season, but Fulham springs to mind.

"But with the optimism before this season with new players and the way pre-season had gone, we fell flat on our faces."

City have little time to lick their wounds with a Carling Cup first round tie at Yeovil tomorrow night.

"Straightaway we've got to put it to the back of our minds because the season will be over before it's started if we don't start picking up results. We've got to go away from home and put things right," said Drury, who said there was a stunned atmosphere in the dressing room at half-time.

"People were shell-shocked and a lot of harsh words were said. It wasn't good enough, simple as that."