Haverfordwest County AFC manager Tony Pennock was frustrated that his side’s positive performance didn’t result in a better outcome as the Bluebirds suffered a narrow 2-1 defeat to Penybont at the Ogi Bridge Meadow on Friday evening.

The Town took the lead through Ben Ahmun and created further opportunities during the game, but a fine goal from Owen Pritchard and James Crole’s second-half effort saw the visitors come from behind to earn the spoils.

This was County’s first defeat since returning to the Ogi Bridge Meadow on New Year’s Day, with the focus remaining on ensuring a strong finish to the regular season before the European play-offs begin.

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

On the result

When you play as well as we did tonight, and I thought we were good tonight, the best we’ve played in a few weeks or a few matches, we should come away with the win. But against a very experienced team, they are where they are in the league for a reason, because they’re a good team, they just had a couple of chances and put them in the back of the net. We had several chances more than them, but we didn’t capitalise on our good play. It’s a game that we learn from. We know we need to be better than that, but overall I thought the performance was really good.

On the performance

We still had opportunities to go in at half time with the lead. We had a couple more opportunities after they equalised to get our second goal, but we didn’t take them and ultimately paid the price for it in the second half. We’ve had good opportunities, balls across the face of the box, set-pieces, crosses, balls bouncing in the six yard box and nobody landing on it. And they score from a routine free-kick really, inside our own half and we lose the first contact, lose the second contact and it’s in the back of our net.

It’s something we need to be better at. We spend a lot of time focusing on set-pieces, and we’ve conceded from two. Yes, the first one’s a great strike, but he’s still got time to pick his spot and he’s finished it fantastically well. So overall, disappointed with the result, but I can’t really fault the boys at all.

On maintaining perspective 

We’ve lost six games this season, which in 29 isn’t bad. Three against TNS, two against Penybont. So it’s only Flint in the league that apart from those two have beat us this year. So you could say that we are the third best team, but if we want to cement that third place we know we need to pick up points pretty quickly. Caernarfon got a big win tonight, and Met are close behind us as well. So we’ve got to get over it quickly and get down to hard work, because this week is going to be hard work, a hard week in training to make sure we’re ready for a tough game against Caernarfon next Saturday.

On the battle for second

When Phase Two started, we were 10 points behind Penybont. We looked at it and maybe thought that’s too big a gap for us to catch up. But if we’d have come away with the three points tonight, and with Penybont having TNS at home next week, it might have given us a small opportunity, but it wasn’t to be. Second place is out of our grasp now, and we really need to knuckle down, get across that line and get ourselves ready for the play-offs.

On another impressive crowd

It’s great being back at the Meadow. There was 700 here again today, which just shows that we must be doing something right because the numbers are coming through the gates. I’m disappointed we haven’t given them a result to match the performance. But all in all, our home form all season, even when we were at Carmarthen, has been decent, and we know we’ve got two big home games and a tough away trip to Met to come. We have to pick up points to cement our place in third, and that’s what the boys will be focused on between now and mid-April when the season finishes.