Haverfordwest County manager Tony Pennock was pleased with the way his team battled as the Bluebirds took a point from their final game of 2025 with a goalless draw against Cardiff Metropolitan at Cyncoed Campus.

In an arm wrestle of an encounter which saw both sides make numerous changes after a busy schedule, clear-cut chances were few and far between, however it was the Town who came closest just minutes from time when Greg Walters’ close-range header was saved.

The result means the Bluebirds are now unbeaten in four in the JD Cymru Premier, and Pennock’s men can look ahead to the new year and Phase Two with optimism.

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

On the game

Games against Met are always really tight, both games again this season have been draws. For us, there were lots of positives. There were one or two carrying knocks and Met, you could see they had tired legs as well. But that’s three clean sheets in our last four games, two wins, two draws in December, with three away games in there. So we’ve got to be pleased with that return, only one defeat in our last seven, three wins, three draws, it’s been a lot more consistent. Our performances have been better and yes, we could have nicked it at the end, but they can say the same, they had a couple of counter-attacks and a couple of scrambles first half. So I think it’s a pretty even result, and that’s the end of 2025.

Cardiff Met are a very good side. They’ve been consistently battling for the top six and they’ve been top six every year since I’ve been at the club, so we knew it was going to be tough away from home again. We made a few changes to freshen a few things up, and so did they as well. I think they had four changes from their game against Barry on Boxing Day. It’s not an easy place to come to and play the football we want to play, so we have to be sensible being away from home and stay in the game, and we did, and it almost worked in the end with Abu’s good ball in and Greg’s great header he’s got, and in fairness to the keeper he’s made a very good save.

On how we’ve improved

When we lost at Llanelli back in September, we were bottom of the league. Talking about being close to seventh then was something of a pipe dream. But the boys have knuckled down and you look at the squad again tonight, there’s a strong bench, which makes a difference. I was able to rest one or two and then they come on and keep us in the game, with Greg almost winning us the game. It’s important that we keep everybody fit. Obviously Fawcey’s gone now, but it’s important that we stick together and realise we’ve got 11 big games left.

On the remainder of the season

I’m pretty sure it’s going to be close, I think there’s a lot of teams who are going to be in the bottom six this year that are very even with each other, we’ve seen that already this year, and if we’re going to emulate what we did three years ago and finish seventh and get the play-offs that way, we know we’ve got to work extremely hard, be better than we were for the first 10 games of the phase, and show the same consistency as we have for the last 11. The boys are looking forward to it. We’ll have a little bit of time off now to recover from the two games we’ve had in quick succession, and we’re really looking forward to our last home game of Phase One against Briton Ferry a week on Friday.