Haverfordwest County boss Tony Pennock was proud of the fighting spirit his team showed as the Bluebirds scored in the 87th and 89th minute to rescue a 3-3 draw away at Connah’s Quay Nomads at the Essity Stadium on Saturday.

Having trailed 2-0 at half time after goals from Declan Poole and Jacob Cook, Greg Walters’ goal eight minutes into the second half gave the Town hope. However, when Dan Cowan netted inside the final 20 minutes, it looked a tall order for Pennock’s men.

Despite this, a dramatic final few minutes saw captain Dylan Rees net from close range before substitute Owain Jones won a penalty which Ben Ahmun converted with one minute of normal time remaining to earn County a valuable point in north Wales.

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

On the result

Any point away in this league is is a good point, no matter how we come about them, but we’ve got to give the boys so much credit today. We were disappointed to go two goals down. In the lead up to the second goal, how the linesman gives that as a Connah’s Quay throw in is just beyond a joke. He’s four yards away and he can’t see it has come off their players. Their players turn around and run back towards their goal, because they know it’s our throw-in, and between him and the referee they give the throw to them. We give a free-kick away and they score from the free-kick. It’s hard for the boys when decisions like that go against you, and we lost our discipline, we got a few yellow cards off the back of it. It’s hard to keep your emotions in check, but we spoke at half time about if we get the first goal in the second half, then we backed ourselves to go and get something out of the game, and for 30 minutes [of the second half] we were outstanding. Then they got the third goal from a second phase of a set-piece, which we know we’ve got to get better at, but then to come back again and score the two goals, I think we thoroughly deserved to get a point from that game today.

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On the fighting spirit

The group of boys in that dressing room, honestly, people knock them or keep doubting them, but we saw today we’ve got a full bench and we’re still without Kyle McCarthy, Ben Fawcett and Jack Wilson, but when we’ve got a squad pushing and training as they have this week with the focus on today’s game – yes, we were disappointed with our first-half performance – but second half, it doesn’t shock me that we can perform like that. We did the same for almost 90 minutes at Penybont. Definitely for the first hour at Penybont a few weeks ago and came away with a defeat. But that’s two wins and a draw from our last four games. Connah’s Quay are an excellent team, they’ve recruited well this year and are full of experience, but I think we had them on the back foot for the whole second half.

On Kyle Kenniford’s return and the impact of the squad

It was tough for Kyle, getting injured in our pre-season games before Europe, so he’s missed every game. It’s nice for him to get 20, 25 minutes today. I thought Panashe did excellent when he was on the pitch. Ows [Owain Jones] came on at half time and Ows and Ben up top second half caused their 3 centre backs no end of problems.

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When we can do that and get people up the pitch and, we’ve scored more goals from midfield this year than we have since I’ve been at the club. Greg [Walters] and Sheps [Corey Shephard] have been fantastic, and Greg’s took his goal well. Like I said, Ows and Ben were a right handful second half, and when we do that consistently, then we’ll compete with a lot of teams and that’s what we have to do for the rest of Phase One and see where it takes us.

On next Saturday’s challenge

I watched TNS last night at Llanelli, they’re a fantastic team and they’re on a right run now. They’re scoring goals, they’re right in their flow and it’s going to be tough. But we’ve got no fear. When we went there earlier in the season we had a couple of good chances, one really good chance when we were in the game and then had a decision that there’s no point talking about anymore, and we end up on the wrong end of five goals off the back of that.

We’ll work hard this week, another free week which is massive for us to get the boys on the training pitch twice like we did this week. The boys have trained really hard and we’ll be ready for next Saturday, which is the test everyone wants, to pit themselves against the best team in the league.

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