Haverfordwest County AFC manager Tony Pennock was pleased by the way his team responded to a slow start to run out comfortable 3-0 winners against 10-man Newtown at LHP Stadium on Friday evening.

The Robins had had the better of the opening exchanges, but the Bluebirds took control in the second half of the first half, with Lee Jenkins heading in from a corner as Zeli Ismael saw red for the visitors before the interval.

The Town then found the net twice inside the first 15 minutes of the second half through Iori Humphreys and Owain Jones to all but end the contest.

The result means County remain unbeaten after five games of the 2024-25 campaign, with three wins and two draws to their name so far.

Here’s what the manager had to say in full after the game:

On the result and performance

The boys have been fantastic since they came back in, from day one of pre-season really, and everything we did over pre-season has gone into our league campaign so far. We’re five games in, a long way to go, but I can’t ask for any more from the lads.

Newtown were definitely the better team for the first 20 minutes. I didn’t think we started that well. We were a bit sloppy with our possession, and Newtown almost made the most of that.  It’s probably a good sign of where we are that we didn’t really concede clear-cut chances in that period where we didn’t start well, and then we grew into the game, managed to get control of it and then had a couple of decent chances before Jenks got the goal before half time.

On responding to the red card

I thought we controlled the game then. Newtown obviously wanted to stay in the game as long as they can, but getting the second goal from the set-piece again from Iori was vital, and the game was pretty much over after the third goal.

I thought the third goal was excellent. I thought we had a couple of other opportunities from some good play. Greg Walters’ header in the first half, that would have been a really good goal if that had gone in, but the keeper made a save. So apart from the first 20 minutes, being picky, we need to be better, we know that, but in terms of everything else the lads have done, all the subs have come on and made a really good impact as well which is important, and the squad moves forward to TNS next Saturday.

On our steps forward

There’s a lot of areas that we’ve improved on from the last two seasons. Clean sheets for one, that’s four in five games. Being more consistent, that’s five games unbeaten now. I’m not sure what our best run is since I’ve been at the club or before that. I think it might be four, might be five, I’m not sure, and scoring from our own set-pieces is something that we’ve worked on. We talk about it quite a lot now, a lot more than we have previously, and with the aerial threats we’ve got we need to find ways of making the most of it.

This evening, Jenks getting the first contact on his goal and then Greg Walters, his ball for the third goal was fantastic, and his header for the third goal, it was a sensible header, he couldn’t score from where he was but he put it back into an area where somebody else can score, and Iori read that and put the ball away. So we’ve scored some good squad goals so far, rather than individuals doing something special, and long may that continue.

On our improved physicality

Newtown gave us a real hiding at our place last season. It was men against boys, they dominated from pretty much the start to the end of the game, beating us 4-0, but we’ve grown since then. We’ve grown as a group and, like I said, we’ve added a bit more experience and the young boys have grown up a lot in the last 12 months. So it’s important that we keep improving, keep learning and keep moving forward as a club on and off the pitch, and so far we’re doing well. But like I said, we’re only five games in, there’s another 17 games left in Phase One. We know what our target is, and there’s 11 other teams with a similar target to us, so all we can do is improve, concentrate on ourselves and do what we can do.

On the challenge of TNS

It’s always a good challenge. We talk about it all the time. To improve, you have to play against the best teams as often as you can. We found it tough the last two seasons, missing out on the top six. We’re far from it yet, but that’s what we want to be, and if we end up playing TNS four times a season, I’ll learn a lot more about myself as a coach and a manager, Gary [Richards] does, and the players do as players.

With TNS, you don’t qualify for the league phase of the Conference League if you’re not an excellent squad of players, and TNS have got an excellent squad of players. They might have changes to the team that played last night in Europe when we play them next week, but we know how tough it is. We want tough challenges week in, week out. We’ve had five really tough games to start the season, and the last one in the set of six is TNS. So it doesn’t get any tougher than that.