- Crole (59')
- Kircough (72')
- Fawcett (14')
Haverfordwest County boss Tony Pennock said his team have to take heart from their performance against high-flying Penybont on Tuesday night, as the Bluebirds were edged out 2-1 in Bridgend.
Ben Fawcett’s goal gave the Town a deserved lead with 14 minutes on the clock, and if it wasn’t for a couple of outstanding saves from home stopper Luke Armstrong, Pennock’s men could have gone into the break at least two goals to the good.
James Crole and Gabe Kircough found the net in the second half to turn the game around, with the Bluebirds very unfortunate not to head back west with something to show for their efforts.
Here’s what the manager had to say in full after the game:
On the game
The boys were brilliant. First half, to put Penybont – a top team in this league – under the amount of pressure we did was a credit to the lads. Unfortunately we didn’t get that second goal, the keeper has made a couple of saves and maybe it didn’t quite fall for us, but we’ve got to take heart from that and realise when we’ve got almost everyone back available and we perform as a group like we did today in large parts of the game, we can compete with anybody on the day.
You look at the two goals we’ve conceded, both really disappointing goals, and that’s the frustration from it. If we just kept our concentration and did the things that we did as a team for the first 60 minutes, then we might come away with a one nil or even a one all, but the two goals are disappointing. It is what it is, the game’s gone now.
We’ve got a massive game Friday night and we need everybody available for that Friday night because we need to start trying to close the gap on the teams above us. Bala’s going to be no different. They’ve had a really good start to the season. They’ve had a couple of performances or results lately that haven’t gone their way, but in saying that, they’re still in the top six and we are at home, so we’ve got to try and make home advantage count again.
On being unlucky
I don’t think anybody could have argued with the way we played and the level we were at first half if we had gone in two or three up, but we didn’t, their keeper has done his job tonight, he’s made saves. I’ve been asking that of the boys. We haven’t been hitting targets and we were better on Saturday and we were certainly better again tonight, but we just found a goalkeeper who was on top of his game this evening and won Man of the Match.
It’s disappointing, there’s so many positives to take from tonight. So many good performances. And again, we’re playing against the team who’s going to finish in the top three guaranteed this season again because they’ve got a really good squad of players, even with them missing a few tonight.
On Elliot Scotcher
As I’ve said all along, Elliot hasn’t played a lot of football for two years. If I’d have played him tonight, then there’s no way he would’ve played on Friday, really. We’ve got to be fair to him, we’ve got a squad of players who are fit, so if somebody’s not quite ready and able to play, then people who are fit will play. If they weren’t good enough they wouldn’t be at the club, so whoever’s available and fit, they have to give me a decision whether I pick them or not.
Elliot will be fine for Friday. He’ll come back into the squad on Friday night. There’s one or two bumps in there tonight, because it was a physical game, but they’re a tough group and I’m sure they’ll all be fine and raring to go to put a good performance in against Bala.
